603 Quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

Is it hard to raise an elephant?” It was some minutes before anybody answered. But then Debra said, “I don’t think so, Mma. It’s not hard to do anything if you do it with love.

But he’ll never be fully recognised, because Scots literature these days is all about complaining and moaning and being injured in one’s soul.

Eating with others was different from just talking to them – it was an act of commitment, a recognition of shared humanity. We all share these physical needs, it said; we are brothers and sisters in our vulnerability.

It is such an easy thing to do – to touch another in sympathy – but it is such a hard thing too.

We can’t have moral obligations to every single person in this world. We have moral obligations to those who we come up against, who enter into our moral space, so to speak. That means neighbors, people we deal with, and so on.

Any author of fiction will tell you that characters don’t need to be told what to do.

He took a deep breath. ‘To marry me,’ he said quietly. It was easier than he thought. Icarus did not fall from the sky; the ground did not open; the earth did not wobble on its trajectory.

Neighbours are given to us on the same basis as we are given our families. There is no element of choice involved – none at all.

Words that are full of hurt sometimes need to be left in the air where they have been spoken.