Alexander McCall Smith Quotes

Mma Ramotswe had listened to a World Service broadcast on her radio one day which had simply taken h...

It was hard to disappear completely in Botswana, where there were fewer than two million people and ...

If we let the men talk about them and decide them, then suddenly we wake up and find out that the me...

We shall change all that...because it is possible to change the world, if one is determined enough, ...

That, incidentally, gives me the greatest possible pleasure—the knowledge that we are all linked by ...

Men can be teenagers until well into their twenties. That is well known

Great feuds often need very few words to resolve them. Disputes, even between nations, between peopl...

He would sit down and consider the situation carefully. Not only did this help to identify the solut...

There were some people, it seemed, who were incapable of being pleasant about anything. Of course, t...

Perhaps trust had to be accompanied by a measure of common sense, and a hefty dose of realism about ...

The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved; that is such a miracle, ...

And if there's bad behaviour," Mma Potokwane went on. "If there's bad behaviour, the quickest way of...

It is so easy to thank people," said Mma Ramotswe, passing the letter over to Mma Makutsi, "and most...

There was no point in telling somebody not to cry, she had always thought; indeed there were times w...

If she was going to remain an engaged lady, then she would make the most of it, and one of the ways ...

They sang that song which distills all the suffering and the hope of Africa; that song which had ins...

We all know that it is women who take the decisions, but we have to let men think that the decisions...

Mr Mandela, who had given his whole life for justice and had never once thought of himself. How unli...

She had never been able to tolerate dishonesty, which she thought threatened the very heart of relat...

When people ask for advice they very rarely want your advice and will go ahead and do what they want...

To lose your own language was like forgetting your mother, and as sad, in a way.

..what moved me was that I had found something I didn't think could exist. And that thing - the thin...

Everything, all those great things, had happened so far away--or so it seemed to [Mma Ramotswe] at t...

She was of traditional build herself, but her figure was largely concealed by the folds of a generou...

Of course, the abolition of Hell meant that such thoughts were now the merest fantasy. Isobel was ag...

The trouble with Grace, she thought, is that she is so literal. But that was the trouble with most p...

And then the second thing you have to do is go and see your son. That is a duty of love, Andrew. It'...

Very..." She left the word hanging. Very unfinished, thought Isabel. The woman finished her sentence...

Then there was Mr Mandela. Everybody knew about Mr Mandela and how he had forgiven those who had imp...

Africa had a way of coming back and simply covering everything up again.

It was easy to make a difference to other people’s lives, so easy to change the little room in which...

Mma Ramotswe reflected on how easy it was to find oneself committed to a course of action simply bec...

It was a stark choice: shoes or food; beauty or sustenance; the sensible or the self-indulgent. "I'l...

Mr. J.L.B Matekoni," she asked, "do you think that our souls grow as we get older?"He did not answer...

He had been thinking of how landscape moulds a language. It was impossible to imagine these hills gi...

Africa was full of people in need of help and there had to be a limit. You simply could not help eve...

It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.

The ordinary people of Africa tended not to have room in their hearts for hatred. They were sometime...

Most morality, thought Mma Ramotswe, was about doing the right thing because it had been identified ...

It was a good thing to be an African. There were terrible things that happened in Africa, things tha...

Mma Ramotswe tucked the cheque safely away in her bodice. Modern business methods were all very well...

Morality is for everybody, and this means that the views of more than one person are needed to creat...

...the real poison within families is not the poison that you put in your food, but the poison that ...

Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably ...

Matthew knew that phrenology was nonsense, and yet, years later, he found himself making judgments s...

International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.

Gracious acceptance is an art - an art which most never bother to cultivate. We think that we have t...

Antonia was very conscious of the corrosive power of envy and felt that it was this emotion, more th...

Bertie stared at his mother. She spoils things, he thought. All she ever does is spoil things. He ha...

Go to any small village anywhere in the world, and see what they remember. Everything. It's all ther...

It was always a mistake, she thought, to dwell on the cause of one's anger.

If we treated others with the consideration that one would give to those who only had a few days to ...

In an earlier age, it might have been possible to believe that goodness would prevail over pride, bu...

Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death ...

And if you do see any pirates, I don't want you to pick up any rough manners from them. Do you under...

I have a feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're look...

That of all people, it should be him; that took her aback. That the heart should settle on somebody ...

...it must be odd to have no ambition, not to want something more.

A photograph may speak to the photographer's envy or disappointment just as much as it may reveal hi...

Anybody can lose,' cautioned Mr J.L.B. Matekoni. 'You need to remember that every time you win.

Dieting was cruel; it was an abuse of human rights. Yes, that's what it was, and she should not allo...

The value of money is subjective, depending on age. At the age of one, one multiplies the actual sum...

She brought a chair into the room and placed it alongside the top of his bed. Then she held his hand...

we must love those with whom we live and work, and love them for all their failings, manifest and ma...

People don’t talk about mercy very much these days—it has a rather old-fashioned ring to it. but it ...

Tolerance was like one of those soothing creams—it drew out inflammation, it did away with the pain.

Can you forgive her? Can you do that?There was no response.Because if you can start to forgive, then...

…the world was a vale of tears—it always had been.

She had always understood that love could have an intense physical effect; could fill a space somewh...

…there is faith and faith. One form of faith is actual practice—the rituals and so on—the other form...

What we have, we all must lose—that applied to everything, even to that which we thought we had the ...

He smiled as he imagined the composite Jamie/Isabel, who would play the bassoon, read philosophy, in...

. . . there was something that Isabel had said that always stuck in his mind. Remember what you have...

He evidently did not care that they were in full view of a cluster of dog-owners walking their dogs....

Waiting in the reception area, she had flicked through a news magazine that had been lying on the ta...

A moral dilemma is equally absorbing whether the stakes are the destiny of nations or the happiness ...

Has anyone sen Mr Snark " "I saw him in the tunnel about 15 minutes ago." "Oh no " wailed Dr Ferman ...

Memories of that which we have lost are curious things - weeks, months, even years may pass without ...

...Perhaps part of the secret of leading a life in which you would not always be worrying about thin...

His sixth year, it seemed to him, had lasted a remarkably long time and there were points at which h...

My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hope...

She had not come to the shopping centre to buy shoes; she had come to buy food, and there was a big ...

So it was in Botswana, almost everywhere; ties of kinship, no matter how attenuated by distance or t...

Our stomachs live in towns," said Mma Potokwani, patting the front of her dress. 'That is where the ...

It's through the small things that we develop our moral imagination, so that we can understand the s...

Surely it is better, thought Domenica, that forty-five should buy the book and actually read it, tha...

We live in a culture of complaint because everyone is always looking for things to complain about. I...

It's because there are too many people who want to stop us having fun. That's the reason.

No plaque reminds the passer-by of these glories, although there should be one; for those who invent...

There was a great deal of progress being made, right under their noses, particularly in Africa, and ...

Men, she thought, were odd about their clothes: they liked to wear the same things until they became...

It was a voice that you felt you had to listen to—or you ignored at your peril.

There is a tidal wave of ignorance, Mma Ramotswe. It is a great tidal wave and it will drown all of ...

I shall go and sit under a tree…. Which tree, Mma?... Oh, there are many trees in this life, she sai...

She was proud of her build, which was in accordance with the old Botswana ideas of beauty, and she w...

She knew as well as anyone that the world could be a place of trial and sorrow, that there was injus...

It shall be an offence for any man, either a husband or other person of the male sex, married or oth...

... 'You can't read everything. I've never got beyond the beginning of Proust. I love him, but I can...

How often have I noticed or, indeed, listened to him? We talk, but do I actually listen, or is our c...

She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.

Great art, she felt, had a calming effect on the viewer; it made one stop in awe, which is exactly w...