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Talking about pumpkins doesn't make them grow.

Alexander McCall Smith

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Alexander McCall Smith
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: August 24
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Alexander Sandy McCall Smith
Make
Pumpkins
Pumpkin
Grow
Grows
Talking
Doesn

More quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

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It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.
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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.
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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?
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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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Dating is really all about sex. In the conventional context, this means that the man invites the woman to go through a social encounter, the ultimate purpose of which is sexual engagement.
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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International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.
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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I'm interested in character and dialogue and exchange of ideas.
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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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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There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.
Alexander McCall Smith
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A very powerful theme in fiction is that of loss.
Alexander McCall Smith
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Ritual is a terribly important, binding cement in a society. If we abandon formality and rituals, we're actually weakening the relationships that exist between people that bind.
Alexander McCall Smith
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The good were worthy of note because they battled and that battle was a great story, whereas the evil were evil because of moral laziness, or weakness, and that was ultimately a dull and uninteresting affair.
Alexander McCall Smith
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It seems to me that we're in danger of losing sight of certain basic civic values in society by allowing the growth of a whole generation of people who really have no sense of attachment to society.
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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How many of us are happy to be exactly where we are at any moment?...only the completely happy think that they are in the correct place.
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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I'm very interested in tea. I wouldn't mind being involved in some aspect of the tea industry.
Alexander McCall Smith