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If your ceiling should fall down, then you have lost a room, but gained a courtyard. Think of it that way.

Alexander McCall Smith

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Alexander McCall Smith
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: August 24
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Alexander Sandy McCall Smith
Way
Courtyard
Think
Ceiling
Thinking
Ceilings
Gained
Room
Rooms
Fall
Lost

More quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

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There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.
Alexander McCall Smith
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Edinburgh used to be a haughty city.
Alexander McCall Smith
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But you cannot expect every writer to dwell on human suffering. I think my books do deal with grave issues. People who say they are too positive probably havent read them.
Alexander McCall Smith
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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
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Life consists of positive and negative features, and I think that it is permissible to write about both.
Alexander McCall Smith
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Daughters could survive a powerful mother, but boys found it almost impossible. Such boys were often severely damaged and spent the rest of their lives running away from their mothers, or from anybody who remotely reminded them of their mothers either that, or they became their mothers, in a desperate, misguided act of psychological self defence.
Alexander McCall Smith
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If you lose sight of the smaller accomplishments , you end up with an imbalance in your life.
Alexander McCall Smith
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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
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Be content with who you are and where you are, and do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself.
Alexander McCall Smith
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Old friends, like old shoes, are comfortable. But old shoes, unlike old friends, tend not to be supportive: it is easier to stumble and sprain an ankle while wearing a pair of old shoes than it is in new shoes, with their less yielding leather.
Alexander McCall Smith
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Who can't like pigs? They're wonderful creatures! I've always liked pigs.
Alexander McCall Smith
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They're very beautiful, aren't they? Clouds are very beautiful and yet so often we fail to appreciate them properly. We should do that. We should look at them and think about how lucky we are to have them.
Alexander McCall Smith
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It is the search for beauty...That is what it is. We find ourselves on this earth--gods and men--and we know that it is beautiful. That is one of the few things we understand--beauty because it is there, in the world, and we can see it all about us. We want beauty. It requires our love. It just does.
Alexander McCall Smith
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If you want to write, do two things - read lots of books and also, in your own writing, practise. Just write and write and then write again. persist. And never be put off or discouraged. You can do it!
Alexander McCall Smith
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I think that we've made great moral progress in the second half of the 20th century in many respects, and particularly in relation to human rights but I think that we are losing sight of some of the values of concern for others, and self-respect and respect for others.
Alexander McCall Smith
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She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.
Alexander McCall Smith
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Each of us is born into our own mysteries but the mystery of another might just take us in and embrace us. And then what a sense of homecoming, of belonging!
Alexander McCall Smith
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Oh I love gadgets and I pride myself on keeping at the cutting edge of technology.
Alexander McCall Smith
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Well, Id say all of us are a combination of moods and emotions. In my day to day life I dont go around skipping, but at times one can feel sheer exhilarating joy at the world.
Alexander McCall Smith
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[Edinburgh] is a city of shifting light, of changing skies, of sudden vistas. A city so beautiful it breaks the heart again and again.
Alexander McCall Smith