The Man with the Silver Saab Quotes

“like yearning to be a swan when you were demonstrably a bird of a different feather;”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Man with the Silver Saab

“Voilà,” he said as he completed the procedure. Ulf smiled. He was pleased that he had a vet who said voilà. It was not necessarily what one expected from somebody whose profession was so physical, so matter-of-fact. Chefs might say voilà as they extracted some elaborate creation from the oven; an artist might say voilà as he put the final touch of paint to the canvas; a couturier might utter the word as he revealed a new outfit—but not a vet; nor, for that matter, a dentist, nor, a fortiori, a fireman, as he played the final jet of water over the dying embers of a fire.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Man with the Silver Saab

“Mrs. Högfors scratched Martin’s back, a courtesy that he always greatly appreciated. “Poor Martin,” she said. “It’s not easy being a dog, is it?” Ulf was not sure whether the question was directed at him or at Martin. He replied, though, on Martin’s behalf. “I get by,” he said. “As long as you people remember to feed me. And, of course, give me plenty of exercise.” Mrs. Högfors smiled. “But that’s in the contract, Martin. That’s in the contract between dogs and man.” —”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Man with the Silver Saab

“He sounds very unworldly,” replied Ulf. “From what I heard the other night, he doesn’t really know what’s going on. He’s a philosopher, you see.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Man with the Silver Saab

“You could do your best to lead a quiet life, to keep out of unnecessary conflict, to put in your forty years or whatever it was of working to the best of your ability without creating too many ripples, but there were always difficult decisions needing to be made. And however hard you tried, there would be times when you could not avoid causing pain to others, because pain and disappointment seemed an inevitable concomitant of human life. The moment you accepted any promotion, any slight advantage over those below you in the pecking order, you had to accept that you might have to do things that others would prefer you not to do—make rulings that would dash the hopes of others, give one person advantage over another, make people do things they would rather not do. All this came with seniority; all this came with working in a hierarchical organisation; all this came with simply being human.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Man with the Silver Saab

“Photocopying is an excuse not to read something. You say to yourself, I’ll photocopy this because it’s worth reading, and you do so. But then you’re not going to read the original, are you? You think, I’ve dealt with it, but you haven’t, have you? You put the photocopy in the in tray or you leave it on top of a filing cabinet, or whatever, but you never read it.” He paused. “The carrying out of the external acts associated with a duty is not the same as the discharge of the duty itself.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Man with the Silver Saab

“I can’t think of anything to send a memo about,” he said. “And anyway, there was that memo we got the other day telling us not to send too many memos.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Man with the Silver Saab

“Oh, I wasn’t suggesting you lied,” protested Blomquist. “I was merely raising it as a possibility. I didn’t say you should do that.” That itself, thought Ulf, is a lie. Blomquist was lying about lying, which, of course, was what happened when you started to lie. The first lie required a second—for consistency’s sake—and then a third and a fourth. Soon you would end up living in a vale of lies, where even the fact that it was night or day would be uncertain because the position of the sun could be denied if you so desired.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Man with the Silver Saab

“He said that it should be on the basis of need. People who couldn’t come up with a good reason to drive would not be allocated a licence. They would have to use public transport.” Ulf sighed. This was typical of the Moderate Extremists: an impossible policy, dressed up in Utopian language, and destined—if not actually calculated—to antagonise at least one large segment of the population.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Man with the Silver Saab

“there is always a very precise moment for words like that to be uttered; then it passes and it is too late. Just as the moment for words like sorry or I love you is a brief one, fleeting and irreplaceable; a moment of liminality, perhaps.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Man with the Silver Saab

“What a sad reflection that was on the way we ordered our affairs, that anybody should feel that they were just something. Everybody was significant; everybody was as valuable as everybody else. If we stopped thinking that, then any attempt at morality would be built on sand.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Man with the Silver Saab

“There had been a long article about the resurgence of stoicism in a newspaper he had picked up in the coffee bar—some of it, he recalled, underlined in red ink by an unknown reader. That happened to many of the newspapers and magazines there—somebody was furtively, and selectively, underlining certain things in red.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Man with the Silver Saab

“A local politician was being accused of fathering six children by six different women. “He has expressed surprise at these allegations,” the paper reported, “but has admitted to two of them.” Ulf sighed again. What did it matter? It was far too late to stop people breeding irresponsibly; it was far too late, in fact, to stop anybody doing anything. And yet, that was what he was paid to do. He, and Anna, and Carl were paid by the state, regularly and quite generously, to stop people from doing things that society deemed unacceptable. That was what they did—or were meant to do.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The Man with the Silver Saab