603 Quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

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.

Talking about pumpkins doesn’t make them grow.

They’re very beautiful, aren’t they? Clouds are very beautiful and yet so often we fail to appreciate them properly. We should do that. We should look at them and think about how lucky we are to have them.

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.

But please be careful – and never, never think that you are justified in doing something wrong just because you are trying to do something right.

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

The whole point about childhood,” Domenica went on, “is that it affords us a brief moment of innocence and protection from the pressures of the world. Parents who push their children too hard intrude on that little bit of space.

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.

I am grateful to you for being who you are: for standing up for ladies with large glasses and a bad skin and for everybody else who has had to battle to get where they have got. And most of all I am grateful to you for being my friend, Mma; I am grateful to you for that. That is the best thing that anybody can be to anybody else – a friend.