"You can go through life and make new friends every year - every month practically - but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel."
— Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency)

"It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Morality for Beautiful Girls)

"It was time to take the pumpkin out of the pot and eat it. In the final analysis, that was what solved these big problems of life. You could think and think and get nowhere, but you still had to eat your pumpkin. That brought you down to earth. That gave you a reason for going on. Pumpkin."
— Alexander McCall Smith

"We all know that it is women who make the decisions, but we have to let men think that the decisions are theirs. It is an act of kindness on the part of women."
— Alexander McCall Smith

"Traditional Botswana men like ladies who are more traditionally shaped. You and I, Mma. We remind men of how things used to be in Botswana before these modern-shaped ladies started to get men all confused."
— Alexander McCall Smith (The Full Cupboard of Life)

"She had a taste for sugar, however, and this meant that a doughnut or a cake might follow the sandwich. She was a traditionally built lady, after all, and she did not have to worry about dress size, unlike those poor, neurotic people who were always looking in mirrors and thinking that they were too big. What was too big, anyway? Who was to tell another person what size they should be? It was a form of dictatorship, by the thin, and she was not having any of it. If these thin people became any more insistent, then the more generously sized people would just have to sit on them. Yes, that would teach them! Hah!"
— Alexander McCall Smith

"The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea."
— Alexander McCall Smith (The Miracle at Speedy Motors)

"Gracious acceptance is an art - an art which most never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving.... Accepting another person's gift is allowing him to express his feelings for you."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Love Over Scotland)

"But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?"
— Alexander McCall Smith (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate)

"Why is it that there are always these problems and misunderstandings between men and women? Surely it would have been better if God had made only one sort of person, and the children had come by some other means, with the rain perhaps."
— Alexander McCall Smith (The Kalahari Typing School for Men)

"She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds."
— Alexander McCall Smith (The Sunday Philosophy Club)

"Sorry about your sausage dog."
— Alexander McCall Smith (The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs)

"That of all people, it should be him; that took her aback. That the heart should settle on somebody like him; that surprised her. But she was so certain about it, so certain."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Dream Angus: The Celtic God of Dreams)

"Do not act meanly, do not be unkind, because the time for setting things right may pass before your heart changes course.
Isabel Dalhousie"
— Alexander McCall Smith (The Careful Use of Compliments)

"But that's exactly the problem, retorted Isabel. We're all stuck with the same tired and trusted ideas. If we refused to entertain the possibility of something radically different, then we'd never make any progress - ever. We'd still be thinking that the sun revolved round the earth."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate)

"And if there's bad behaviour," Mma Potokwane went on. "If there's bad behaviour, the quickest way of stopping it is to give more love. That always works, you know. People say we must punish when there is wrongdoing, but if you punish you're only punishing yourself. And what's the point of that?"
— Alexander McCall Smith (The Good Husband of Zebra Drive)

"...how sorry she felt for white people, who couldn't do any of this (sit talking with friends and growing melons) and who were always dashing around and worrying themselves over things that were going to happen anyway. What use was it having all the money if you could never sit still or just watch your cattle, and yet they did not know it. Every so often you met a white person who understood, who realized how things really were; but these people were few and far between and the other white people often treated them with suspicion. "
— Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency)

"Now constipation was quite a different matter...It would be dreadful for the whole world to know about troubles of that nature. She felt terribly sorry for people who suffered from constipation, and she knew that there were many who did. There were probably enough of them for a political party - which a chance of government. Perhaps - but what would such a party do if it was in power? Nothing, she imagined. It would try to pass legislation, but would fail." (p, 195)"
— Alexander McCall Smith

"She had not made a lot of money, but she had not made a loss, and she had been happy and entertained. That counted for infinitely more than a vigorously healthy balance sheet. In fact, she thought, annual accounts should include an item specifically headed Happiness, alongside expenses and receipts and the like."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Tears of the Giraffe)

"Mma Ramotsew accepted her large slice of cake and looked at the rich fruit within it. There were at least seven hundred calories in that, she thought, but it did not matter; she was a traditionally built lady and she did not have to worry about such things."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Morality for Beautiful Girls)

"There is room in history for all of us."
— Alexander McCall Smith

"Regular maps have few surprises: their contour lines reveal where the Andes are, and are reasonably clear. More precious, though, are the unpublished maps we make ourselves, of our city, our place, our daily world, our life; those maps of our private world we use every day; here I was happy, in that place I left my coat behind after a party, that is where I met my love; I cried there once, I was heartsore; but felt better round the corner once I saw the hills of Fife across the Forth, things of that sort, our personal memories, that make the private tapestry of our lives."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Love Over Scotland)

"Many waters cannot quench love: the anthem's setting remained in her ears, repeating itself; a tune so powerful that it might gird one against the disappointments of life, rather than make one aware that our attempts to subdue the pain of unrequited love - of impossible love, of love that we are best to put away and not to think about - tended not to work, and only made the wounds of love more painful."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate)

"The trouble with Grace, she thought, is that she is so literal. But that was the trouble with most people, when it came down to it; there were very few who enjoyed flights of fantasy, and to have that sort of mind--one which enjoyed dry with and understood the absurd--left one in a shrinking minority."
— Alexander McCall Smith (The Careful Use of Compliments)

"He looked at her in the darkness, at this woman who was everything to him-mother, Africa, wisdom, understanding, good things to eat, pumpkins, chicken, the white sky across the endless, endless bush, and the giraffe that cried, giving its tears for women to daub on their baskets; O Botswana, my country, my place."
— Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency)

"She had to tell somebody, and Matthew would do. He would not be particularly interested, she knew, but she would tell him anyway. She had to share her joy, as Lou knew that joy unshared was a halved emotion, just as sadness and loss, when borne alone, were often doubled."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Espresso Tales)

"...great things may come from moments of nothingness."
— Alexander McCall Smith (The Miracle at Speedy Motors)

"The difficulty, of course, with standing up to women was that it appeared to make little difference. At the end of the day,a man was no match for a woman.... The only thing to do was to try to avoid situations where women might corner you. And that was difficult, because women had a way of ensuring that you were neatly boxed in, which was exactly what had happened to him. He should have been more careful. He should have been on his guard when she offered him cake. That was her technique, he now understood; just as Eve had used an apple to trap Adam, so [she] had used fruit cake. Fruit cake, apples; it made no difference really. Oh foolish, weak men!"
— Alexander McCall Smith (The Full Cupboard of Life)

"Isabel saw the intimacy of the gestures and felt immediately empty, a sensation so physical and so overwhelming that she felt for a moment that she might stop breathing, being empty of air"
— Alexander McCall Smith (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate)

"People stuck by others for years and years, in the face of all odds, and it should be relief, not disbelief, that one felt on witnessing it. "
— Alexander McCall Smith (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate)

"There is plenty of work for love to do."
— Alexander McCall Smith

"...the thought crossed her mind that a bed was really a very strange thing-a human nest, really, where our human fragility made its nightly demands for comfort and cosseting"
— Alexander McCall Smith

"No plaque reminds the passer-by of these glories, although there should be one; for those who invent biscuits bring great pleasure to many."
— Alexander McCall Smith

"We shall change all that...because it is possible to change the world, if one is determined enough, and if one sees with sufficient clarity just what has to be changed."
— Alexander McCall Smith

"Chance; pure chance. But chance was a dull explanation because it denied the possibility of the paranormal, and people were often disappointed by dull explanations. Mystery and the unknown were far more exciting because they suggested that our world was not quite as prosaic as we feared it might be. Yet we had to adjure those temptations because they lead to a world of darkness and fear. "
— Alexander McCall Smith (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate)

"We were the Bechuanaland Protectorate then, and the British ran our country, to protect us from the Boers (or that is what they said). There was a Commissioner down in Mafikeng, over the border into South Africa, and he would come up the road and speak to the chiefs. He would say: "You do this thing; you do that thing." And the chiefs all obeyed him because they knew that if they did not he would have them deposed. But some of them were clever, and while the British said "You do this," they would say "Yes, yes, sir, I will do that" and all the time, behind their backs, they did the other thing or they just pretended to do something. So for many years, nothing at all happened. It was a good system of government, because most people want nothing to happen. That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left alone to look after their cattle."
— Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency)

"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."
— Alexander McCall Smith (The Sunday Philosophy Club)

"Sometimes she thought that the people overseas had no room in their heart for Africa, because nobody had ever told them that African people were just the same as they were"
— Alexander McCall Smith (Tears of the Giraffe)

"Matthew knew that phrenology was nonsense, and yet, years later, he found himself making judgments similar to those made by his father; slippery people looked slippery; they really did. And how we become like our parents! How their scorned advice - based, we felt in our superiority, on prejudiced and muddled folk wisdom - how their opinions are subsequently borne out by our own discoveries and sense of the world, one after one. And as this happens, we realise with increasing horror that proposition which we would never have entertained before: our mothers were right!"
— Alexander McCall Smith (Love Over Scotland)

"International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Love Over Scotland)

"If you take God out of it, then right and justice become small, human things. And weak things too."
— Alexander McCall Smith (La's Orchestra Saves the World)

"It was a pointed sigh, as sighs sometimes are, not one cast into the air to evaporate, but one calculated to descend, precisely and with great effect, on a target."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Love Over Scotland)

"Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was not a lazy man, but it was remarkable to reflect how most men imagined that things like tea and food would simply appear if they waited long enough. There would always be a woman in the background--a mother, a girlfriend, a wife--who would ensure that those needs would be met."
— Alexander McCall Smith (In the Company of Cheerful Ladies)

"A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?"
— Alexander McCall Smith (In the Company of Cheerful Ladies)

"There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Espresso Tales)

"Isabel had firm views on moral proximity and the obligations it created. WE cannot choose the situations in which we become involved in this life; we are caught up in them whether we like it or not. If one encounters the need for another, because of who one happens to be, or where one happens to find oneself, and one is in a position to help, then one should do so. It was as simple as that. "
— Alexander McCall Smith (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate)

"She was not sure if she would want him to have known; we do not always wish for those for whom we long to know that we long for them, especially if the longing is impossible, or inappropriate. . . to be loved by the unlovable was not something that most people could cope with."
— Alexander McCall Smith (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate)

"Surely it is better, thought Domenica, that forty-five should buy the book and actually read it, than should many thousands, indeed millions, buy it and put it on their shelves, like...Professor Hawking's Brief History of Time. That was a book that had been bought by millions, but had been demonstrated to have been read by only a minute proportion of those who had acquired it. For do we not all have a copy of that on our shelves, and who amongst us can claim to have read beyond the first page, in spite of the pellucid prose of its author and his evident desire to share with us his knowledge of...of whatever it is that the book is about?"
— Alexander McCall Smith (The World According to Bertie)

""That is the problem with governments these days. They want to do things all the time; they are always very busy thinking of what things they can do next. That is not what people want. People want to be left alone to look after their cattle.""
— Alexander McCall Smith (The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency)

""Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom...""
— Alexander McCall Smith (Friends, Lovers, Chocolate)