Alexander McCall Smith Quotes
Our minds can come up with the most entertaining possibilities, if we let them. But most of the time, we keep them under far too close a check.
Quotes to Explore
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Let us go forward in this battle fortified by conviction that those who labour in the service of a great and good cause will never fail.
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God is not something I think about but something I experience as an energy, a Presence. I do find it easier to pray to a female Presence or an androgynous Presence.
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I don't write under the ghost of Faulkner. I live in the same town and find his life and work inspiring, but that's it. I have a motorcycle and tool along the country lanes. I travel at my own speed.
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I never thought 'Stairway to Heaven' was a long song. I loved how there was this part and then there was another part that was completely different.
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I rolled up my sleeves and said, 'I want to make a mark on this world.'
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If I had to do it all over, I'd be more secluded about it.
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I always wanted to be a writer. Maybe, had I been brought up in another generation, I might have just gone into writing rather than medicine - which is not to say that I didn't also have a great attraction towards the idea of being a healer. Fortunately, I've been able to combine the two in ways I could never possibly have imagined.
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I've tried coconut water straight up before, and to me, it's a little funky.
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Close friends consider me a literary snob.
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As a child, I had a serious illness that lasted for two years or more. I have vague recollections of this illness and of my being carried about a great deal. I was known as the 'sick one.' Whether this illness gave me a twist away from ordinary paths, I don't know; but it is possible.
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A long-lasting and sustained recovery will never be achieved through massive government spending programs.
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Children seem naturally drawn to poetry - it's some combination of the rhyme, rhythm, and the words themselves.
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Sometimes I thank God... for cheeseburgers.
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One must do the same subject over again ten times, a hundred times. In art nothing must resemble an accident, not even movement.
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My art originates from hallucinations only I can see. I translate the hallucinations and obsessional images that plague me into sculptures and paintings.
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The familiar trope of the woman in peril doesn't really interest me.
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Summer boarders often left clothes behind, and of what use were they to the landladies, for no rag-and-bone man ever called at their houses. The truth of the matter was that in less than a week I was well dressed from head to foot, all of these things being voluntary offerings, when in quest of eatables.
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I'm very aware and very conscious of the path I chose in life, and very aware of the path I didn't choose.
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The thing about home is that it's a tough place to sustain a career, just by dent of the size of the place. I had about as good a run there as anybody, but it's still a tough ask. I mean, the person I think with the best career in Australia is Ray Meagher, in 'Home and Away.'
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Left to our own devices and passions, we human beings have a hard time seeing beyond what is immediately in front of us.
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I was brought up with two sisters, so I do know about a three-way dynamic. It's a complex one, because it's easy for one to get left out and the others to gang up. In my family, we were all pretty up for it, but the dynamics would constantly change.
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I'm a passionate believer in revision, and a lot of my writing gets done during revision process. It isn't just tweaking: I tend to break it apart and remake it every time I do a new draft.
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I always knew that there were huge opportunities for me, and that I had a lot of potential to do a lot of different things, but I also knew it was about my execution and my application of skills.
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Our minds can come up with the most entertaining possibilities, if we let them. But most of the time, we keep them under far too close a check.
