Alexander McCall Smith Quotes

[Love] may bring surprise, joy, despair and, occasionally, perfect happiness.

Psychology, she thought; that is what they called it these days, but in her view it was something much older than that. It was woman’s knowledge, that was what it was; knowledge of how men behaved and...

There were countless injustices and difficulties in this world, but small points of light too, where the darkness was held back.

Myth could be as sustaining as reality - sometimes even more so.

Innocency: what a wonderful word, and different, in some indefinable way, from innocence. The difference, she thought, lay in the poetry.

The shoes themselves were light green, with lowish heels (which were very important for comfort and walking; high heels were always a temptation, but, like all temptations, one paid for them later).

Boys, men, she said. They're all the same. They think that this [their manhood] is something special and they're all so proud of it. They do not know how ridiculous it is.

But shall we inspect what we see beyond? he went on. Please, after you… Elspeth thought: I am so fortunate. I am married to a man who says Please, after you. How fortunate is that? And she thought of...

We all know that it is women who take 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.

Most of us are quite selfish when it comes to our children, you know. We want things from them: love, the satisfaction of seeing them do well, and so on. Plenty of parents don't think just of their ch...

So the small things came into their own: small acts of helping others, if one could; small ways of making one's own life better: acts of love, acts of tea, acts of laughter. Clever people might laugh...

Now constipation was quite a different matter...It would be dreadful for the whole world to know about troubles of that nature. She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from constipation, and s...

My old friend, he began, is down below, his face we’ll see no more, for what he thought was H2O was H2SO4

When she had those dreams at night, he was there, as if he had never died, although she knew, even in the dream, that he had. One day she would join him, she knew, whatever people said about how we ca...

She knew that for many people this was their greatest ambition: to have a partner and a child, to live the domestic life, but she had never thought it would be enough for her. Yet it was.

She is a good housemother, that one, said Mma Ramotswe. Mma Potokwane agreed. Whenever I hear people say that the country is going to the dogs—and there are such people, you know, Mma…

One of the drawbacks to being a philosopher was that you became aware of what you should not do, and

It was a pink sort of smell- a smell that seemed to get bigger as you smelled it and then burst, just like the popping of a bubble

Of day it was or how we were feeling, they were

Everything is possible in love. In the heart of each of us there can be many rooms, and sometimes there are.