603 Quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

Everybody in a village had a role to play in bringing up a child—and cherishing it—and in return that child would in due course feel responsible for everybody in that village. That is what makes life in society possible. We must love one another and help one another in our daily lives. That was the traditional African way and there was no substitute for it. None.

People who do that sort of thing may reap what they sow, but they also destroy the harvest of those who are around them.

There was a great deal of progress being made, right under their noses, particularly in Africa, and this progress was good. Life was much harder for tyrants than it had been before.

That young man will go far, she said. I don’t know in what direction, but he will go far.

It was curious how some people had a highly developed sense of guilt, she thought, while others had none.

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.

She remembered love, though, and a feeling of warmth. It was like remembering light, or the glow that sometimes persists after a light has gone out.

Metaphors were so bloody: people shot messengers,, flogged dead horses, cut the throats of their competitors. Perhaps that was life; perhaps that's what it was really like.

I shall go and sit under a tree…. Which tree, Mma?... Oh, there are many trees in this life, she said. It does not matter which tree you choose, as long as you choose the right one.