Quote

We should be careful of the insults we fling at others, lest they return and land at our feet, newly minted to apply to those who had first coined them.

Alexander McCall Smith

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Alexander McCall Smith
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: August 24
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Alexander Sandy McCall Smith
Firsts
Lest
First
Apply
Life
Insult
Careful
Minted
Return
Coined
Feet
Insults
Land
Newly
Others
Fling

More quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

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My wife Elizabeth and I started The Really Terrible Orchestra for people like us who are pretty hopeless musicians who would like to play in an orchestra. It has been a great success. We give performances weve become the most famous bad orchestra in the world.
Alexander McCall Smith
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Reality television, which turned its eye on people who were doing nothing but being themselves, was the perfect expression of this trend [of narcissism]. Let's look at ourselves, it said. Aren't we fascinating?
Alexander McCall Smith
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Every small wrong, every minor act of cruelty, every act of petty bullying was symbolic of a greater wrong. And if we ignored these small things, then did it not blunt our outrage over the larger wrongs?
Alexander McCall Smith
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We need to believe I think in justice. We need to run our lives as if justice existed... If we abandon a belief that justice will eventually be done, we make this world much more difficult for ourselves.
Alexander McCall Smith
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It was easy to be moral when that was the way you felt anyway. The hard bit about morality was making yourself feel the opposite of what you really felt.
Alexander McCall Smith
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But don't we often lie to people we love, or not tell them things, precisely because we love them?
Alexander McCall Smith
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Dogs are in on our human silliness lions are not.
Alexander McCall Smith
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I just focus on getting the first scene right, with a few lines about the overall plot, and then the book grows organically.
Alexander McCall Smith
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It would be wonderful to have a guru it would be like having a social worker or a personal trainer, not that people who had either of these necessarily appreciated the advice they received.
Alexander McCall Smith
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It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.
Alexander McCall Smith
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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
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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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I can read more languages than I speak! I speak French and Italian - not very well, alas, but I can get by. I read German and Spanish. I can read Latin (I did a lot of Latin at school.) I'm afraid I do not speak any African languages, although I can understand a little bit of the Zulu-related languages, but only a tiny bit.
Alexander McCall Smith
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I am capable of being idle.
Alexander McCall Smith
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I write four or five a books a year. That means that I usually have one on the go. I am fortunate in being able to write quickly - 1000 words an hour.
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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I cannot see myself in a new car. I am a tiny white van person. That is what i want!
Alexander McCall Smith
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I'm very interested in tea. I wouldn't mind being involved in some aspect of the tea industry.
Alexander McCall Smith
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I write four books a year. I'm very fortunate that I write quickly around 3,500 words a day. Being strict about delineating my writing time and personal life, as well as keeping distractions at bay, is the only way I can accomplish this.
Alexander McCall Smith
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We all know that it is women who take 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