“They are a very great boon to mankind, dentists,’ said Isabel. ‘And I’m not sure that we are grateful enough to them. I’m not sure that we even bother to thank them.’ She paused. Were there any statues of dentists? She thought not. And yet there should be.”
The Careful Use of Compliments, chapter 8.
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Alexander McCall Smith 55
British writer 1948Related quotes
Draft of a pro-EU newspaper column https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/boris-my-case-for-britain-to-stay-in-europe-f7qgrvtps, written before submitting an anti-EU column to the Daily Telegraph, later reproduced in the Sunday Times (February 2016)
2010s, 2016
"Chimpanzees - Bridging the Gap", in Paola Cavalieri, Peter Singer, The Great Ape Project: Equality Beyond Humanity (1996), p. 14
“The first time that she spread her legs for him it had been like opening her jaws for the dentist.”
Still Life with Woodpecker (1980)
Source: Factotum (1975), Ch. 73
Context: There were always men looking for jobs in America. There were always all these usable bodies. And I wanted to be a writer. Almost everybody was a writer. Not everybody thought they could be a dentist or an automobile mechanic but everybody knew they could be a writer. Of those fifty guys in the room, probably fifteen of them thought they were writers. Almost everybody used words and could write them down, i. e., almost everybody could be a writer. But most men, fortunately, aren't writers, or even cab drivers, and some men - many men - unfortunately aren't anything.
Source: Cold Comfort Farm
Source: City of Glass