Alexander McCall Smith Quotes
’They are a very great boon to mankind, dentists,’ said Isabel. ‘And I’m not sure that we are grateful enough to them. I’m not sure that we even bother to thank them.’ She paused. Were there any statues of dentists? She thought not. And yet there should be.
Quotes to Explore
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If we are ever to halt climate change and conserve land, water and other resources, not to mention reduce animal suffering, we must celebrate Earth Day every day - at every meal.
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It was my mother's idea. Her feeling was that I didn't have the intelligence to pick a trade myself.
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All creative people have to have vulnerability because those nuances are what move people. So I'm deeply insecure - but I'm good at hiding it.
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I've dealt with a lot of couples over the years, and most cite the battle for closet and bathroom space as one of the most frequent causes of marital discord.
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I have, like, two and a half years of failed jokes that I know I wouldn't repeat, but I certainly have no comprehension of what definitely works. And the only gauge that I can go by is, 'This makes me laugh,' and is joyful... I like to, if possible, do things that people can enjoy and it doesn't take anybody down.
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All the skills of housewifery are the ones I'm using as a producer.
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I want to have a career in 10, 20 years, so it's harder now, and maybe more stressful now, but in the future, hopefully it will all pay off.
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If anybody's getting a shot, somebody's getting a shot against me because I'm the guy to beat.
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You need to prepare the child you have for the world that exists.
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I noticed in America that if you write a book of any kind, you're made to be the representative of all the issues that might surround it.
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The royal road to a man's heart is to talk to him about the things he treasures most.
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There is some big thing about the world that produced all these people willing to kill themselves just to hurt us. On 9/11 we learned we're part of that world, in the same completely crazy, drastic and arbitrary ways it hits other countries.
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The popularity of leaders like Mandela was an invitation to counter-attack by the government. Mandela was banned from speaking, from attending gatherings, from leaving Johannesburg, from belonging to any organization.
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My mother tells me of when I was 10 or 11 and I'd wear really tight, short skirts and crop tops. All the local men would wolf whistle and stop and stare, but I didn't realise why at the time.
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Everything happens for a reason - I'm a believer of that for sure.
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I've become more and more aware of the promise and struggle to teach the global mind nowadays because I use every chance I get to ask faculty and administrators of management education programs why we don't offer at least one course - not even required, just an elective - on the world's religions.
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Don't tell God they were only little globs of tissue. They were real live persons, being formed in their mother;s womb.
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I hate to lose more than I like to win.
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The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity - the political allocation of wealth and opportunity - is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.
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No, women like you don't write. They carve onion sculptures and potato statues. They sit in dark corners and braid their hair in new shapes and twists in order to control the stiffness, the unruliness, the rebelliousness.
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The trajectory of my writing has moved further and further away from autobiography. My first stories in Confessions of a Falling Woman worked familiar territory - places I had lived, people I knew, my life as an actor in New York - and many were prompted by or grounded in personal experience.
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’They are a very great boon to mankind, dentists,’ said Isabel. ‘And I’m not sure that we are grateful enough to them. I’m not sure that we even bother to thank them.’ She paused. Were there any statues of dentists? She thought not. And yet there should be.
