Alexander McCall Smith citations

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

“She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.”

“We all know that it is women who make the decisions, but we have to let men think that the decisions are theirs. It is an act of kindness on the part of women.”

“That of all people, it should be him; that took her aback. That the heart should settle on somebody like him; that surprised her. But she was so certain about it, so certain.”

“Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself.”

“A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?”

“Do not act meanly, do not be unkind, because the time for setting things right may pass before your heart changes course.
Isabel Dalhousie”

“But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?”

“Mma Ramotswe sighed. 'We are all tempted, Mma. We are all tempted when it comes to cake.'

That is true,' said Mma Potokwane sadly. 'There are many temptations in this life, but cake is probably one of the biggest of them.”

“That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left alone to look after their cattle.”

“every man has a map in his heart of his own country and that the heart will never allow you to forget this map. (p. 18)”

“… great things may come from moments of nothingness.”

“If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.”

“There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out.”

“Why is it that there are always these problems and misunderstandings between men and women? Surely it would have been better if God had made only one sort of person, and the children had come by some other means, with the rain perhaps.”

“There is room in history for all of us.”

“I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own.”

“There is plenty of work for love to do.”

“You are a lucky lady to be marrying a man who can fix things. Most husbands just break things.”

“We find what we are looking for in life, her father had once said to her, which was true—if you look for happiness, you will see it; if you look for distrust and envy and hatred—all those things—you will find those too.”

“Traditional Botswana men like ladies who are more traditionally shaped. You and I, Mma. We remind men of how things used to be in Botswana before these modern-shaped ladies started to get men all confused.”

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

“Special things have a way of surviving.”

“These men were like leeches; they sucked away at the goodness of a woman's heart until it was dry and all her love had been used up. That took a long time, he knew, because women seemed to have vast reservoirs of goodness in them”

“Sorry about your sausage dog.”

“It was true, of course, there was an abnormal level of narcissism in our society, but it did not do, he told himself, to spend too much time going on about it. Society changed. Narcissism was about love, ultimately, even if only love of self. And that was better than hate…. Did it matter if young men thought of fashion and hair gel when, not all that many years ago, their thoughts tended to turn to war and flags and the grim partisanship of the football terrace?”

“And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice – based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudices and muddled folk wisdom – how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right!”

“These tests are designed to exclude others from the discourse - just as the word discourse is itself designed to do. These words are intended to say to people: this is a group thing. If you don't understand what we're talking about, you're not a member of the group. So, if you call this place the Canny Man's it shows that you belong, that you know what's what in Edinburgh. And that, you know, is what everybody wants, underneath. We want to belong.”

“The people with the strong, brave exteriors are just as weak and vulnerable as the rest of us. And of course they never admit to their childish practices, their moments of weakness or absurdity, and then the rest of us think that’s how it should be.”