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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

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Alexander McCall Smith
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: August 24
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Alexander Sandy McCall Smith
Cities
Skies
Break
Scotland
Beautiful
Shifting
Light
Breaks
Heart
Sudden
Changing
Edinburgh
Sky
Scots
City
Vistas

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.
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Our minds can come up with the most entertaining possibilities, if we let them. But most of the time, we keep them under far too close a check.
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Who can't like pigs? They're wonderful creatures! I've always liked pigs.
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I've also long since realized that the way to really engage children is to give out prizes it's amazing how it concentrates their minds.
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Some of my characters are a mixture of various aspects of people I have met. others are pure invention.
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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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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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International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.
Alexander McCall Smith
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The point about love, the essential point, was that we loved what we loved. We did not choose. We just loved.
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.
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To lose a child ... was something that could end one's world. One could never get back to how it was before. The stars went out. The moon disappeared. The birds became silent.
Alexander McCall Smith
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That my philosophy of life is, as far as possible, one of enjoyment. I'm not nihilistic.
Alexander McCall Smith
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New York is a wonderful place to be up, an awful place to be down.
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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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As a writer, you have to realize that people want to like the characters, so you have to be careful to keep them involved.
Alexander McCall Smith
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We don't forget.... Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which came back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are.
Alexander McCall Smith
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I am often thanked by people for inventing the term traditionally built. The people who give me thanks for this are often traditionally built themselves.
Alexander McCall Smith
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Do not take on a traditionally built person unless you are prepared for a heavyweight bout.
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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But we make such mistakes all the time, all through our lives. Wisdom, I suppose, is seeing this and acting upon it before it is too late. But it is often too late, isn't it? - and those things that we should have said are unsaid, and remain unsaid for ever.
Alexander McCall Smith