Alexander McCall Smith Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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There are lots of people who haven't been to drama school who have great talent and can be discovered.
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Each age has deemed the new-born year the fittest time for festal cheer.
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If the reporter has killed our imagination with his truth, he threatens our life with his lies.
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A man will turn over half a library to make one book.
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To Republicans, I humbly suggest that we make it possible for Democrats to give up their quest for redistribution of income and wealth by our acceptance of an appropriate role for government in financing those public goods and services necessary to secure a social safety net below which no American would be allowed to fall.
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We think of the 1950s as an oppressive time in the culture, and indeed it was, but it was also in many ways a more secular moment, and one in which great scientific achievements flourished. I don't want to get too gauzy about this, but there was much more respect for science as a necessary part of society.
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A filial son to his father can be a traitorous subject to his ruler.
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We must honestly face our relationship with Great Britain.
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Attempting to get at truth means rejecting stereotypes and cliches.
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Put your consumers in focus, and listen to what they're actually saying, not what they tell you.
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Books serve to show a man that those original thoughts of his aren't very new at all.
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I love who I am and I love my life, but if I could be someone else, I'd be Beyonce in two seconds.
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When I hear theists and atheists pontificating on how they know God does or does not exist, I can only smile at the irrationality and, yes, vanity of the notion.
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I buy when other people are selling.
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My mom would always play me a lot of late-'50s, late-'60s rock.
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My wife Martha used to call me Ol' Lemon Face because of my facial contortions when I play Lucille. I squeeze my eyes and open my mouth, raise my eyebrows, cock my head and God knows what else. I look like I'm in torture, when in truth, I'm in ecstasy. I don't do it for show. Every fiber of my being is tingling.
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Almost all of us growing up have played baseball on some level. It has an inside track with people. It has a unifying effect.
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I have long been impressed with the focus on politics and that focus being... from young people.
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When you're on stage, you're in control. No one can get to you.
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I tell you to keep going, not because it's easy. Not because it doesn't hurt. I tell you to keep going because there's no other way. To stop is to die. Life is in motion. In growth. In change. Life is in seeking and in finding. Life is in redemption. Each moment is a new birth. A new chance to come back, to get it right.
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If we humans disappeared overnight, the world would probably be better off.
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I've been active all my life. In 1990 I retired from my firm, I.M. Pei & Partners, and for two years I didn't do much. Then I started to get kind of antsy, so I decided, I'm going to do some more work. And I chose to do work outside the U.S. because I've spent 45 years here and I wanted to learn more about what's happening in the rest of the world.
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One thing the music industry has taught me is to manage my expectations.
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We think the world is ours forever, but we are little more than squatters.
