Corduroy Mansions Quotes

“So, in less elevated circles, we might toss a coin as to whether or not to go to a party, decide to go, and there meet the person whom we are to marry and spend our lives with. And if that person came, say, from New Zealand, and wanted to return, then we might find ourselves spending our life in Christchurch. Not that spending one’s lifetime in Christchurch is anything less than very satisfactory—who among us would not be happy living in a city of well-behaved people, within reach of mountains, where the civic virtues ensure courtesy and comfort and where the major problems of the world are an ocean away? But had the coin fallen the other way—as coins occasionally do—then that wholly different prospect might never have opened up and one might spend the rest of one’s days in the place where one started out. Or one might pick up a newspaper abandoned in a train by a person not well schooled in those same civic virtues, open it and chance to see an advertisement for a job that one would not otherwise have seen. And that same job might take one into the path of risk, and that very risk may materialise and end one’s life prematurely. Again the act of picking up the paper has consequences unglimpsed at the time, but profound nonetheless.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions

“Everybody was a potential assailant; nobody spoke to one another for fear of being misinterpreted; nobody comforted another, put an arm around a shoulder-to do so would be to invite accusation.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions

“He knew that one should not punch people who annoyed one, although there was a case for it at times, a seemingly irresistible case.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions

“Poor Terence. Poor, dear, gentle Terence. He had been searching for something all his life -he said as much himself- and he had never found it. And that thing, of course, was love, although he never saw it that way. He said that he was looking for enlightment, for beauty; he said that he was looking for the sacred principle that informed the world. And all the time he was looking for that simple thing that all of us look for; that we yearn for throughout our lives. Just to be loved. That was all.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions

“No, I mean it. People think that everybody has been involved with somebody else, whatever their nature. They find it inconceivable that one might go through life never finding anybody. But you know something, Caroline? I think that's far more common than you would ever imagine. There are plenty of people in that position.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions

“She mused on the Freudian view of the banking crisis. (...) The real key to the crisis, then, was this: if banks were run by hoarders, then they would be slow to lend money they did not have. They would accumulate rather than dispose of money, and they would risk funds they did not have. So what one wanted, then was a class of bankers who were predominantly retentives - people who had not moved from an early stage of infantile sexuality to the more mature stage. In other words, a good banker would be the one who had moved on from the oral stage of early infancy but had not progressed beyond the next stage.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions

“It was Lennie Marchbanks at the door. She had met him once or twice before and rather liked him; mechanics struck her as being such easy, agreeable people. And, she noticed, as a psychotherapist, one never had a mechanic for a patient. Why was that? Were they invariably balanced people, free of the neuroses that afflicted non-mechanically-minded others?”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions

“There were women in the sacred dance group, no doubt, and one of these might be taken aside, woman to woman, and asked to help see that he came to no harm. England was full of helpful women, Berthea was convinced: there were legions of them, all anxious to help in some way and many of them feeling quite frustrated that there were not quite enough men—for demographic reasons—in need of their help.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions

“Barbara said to herself: Oh, please, please, please! Please let nothing go wrong with this—this wildly improbable, impossible, but gorgeous thing. She was not sure to whom to address this invocation. To Venus, perhaps? If the goddess of love were listening, she would surely cherish such an invocation and understand the urgency, the yearning, that lay behind it.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions

“Dee thought that this was a good idea. She approved of exercise and took it herself, in theory at least. But exercise without a good diet was not enough. What was the use of pounding the pavements if one was deficient in selenium, or magnesium for that matter?”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions

“It must be frustrating being a poet-or any sort of artist-and not being able to offend anyone any more.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions

“Manfred's interventions, he thought, had all the characteristics of radio jamming, designed to stop anybody else talking.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions

“He was one of those people, she thought, who just seemed to know a great deal. And he spoke so wisely, as if had thought for hours about everything he said.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions

“Why should everybody embrace the herd instinct, which required one to regard one set of politicians as being always in the right while demonizing another set?”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Corduroy Mansions