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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And all for love, and nothing for reward.
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For these cultures, getting rid of the pain without addressing the deeper cause would be like shutting off a fire alarm while the fire's still going.
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In fifty words: Granted mobility, security (in the form of denying targets to the enemy), time, and doctrine (the idea to convert every subject to friendliness), victory will rest with the insurgents, for the algebraical factors are in the end decisive, and against them perfections of means and spirit struggle quite in vain.
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I believe that you tend to create your own blessings. You have to prepare yourself so that when opportunity comes, you're ready.
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The discharge of a duty from affection is the best solace for sorrow.
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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.
