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I'm interested in character and dialogue and exchange of ideas.

Alexander McCall Smith

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Alexander McCall Smith
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: August 24
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Alexander Sandy McCall Smith
Interested
Character
Ideas
Exchange
Dialogue

More quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

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As a writer I've learned certain lessons. One of them is to be careful about how you put a view, and to bear in mind how easily and readily you'll be misinterpreted.
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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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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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.
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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Do you realise that people die of boredom in London suburbs? It's the second biggest cause of death amongs the English in general. Sheer boredom...
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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Edinburgh used to be a haughty city.
Alexander McCall Smith
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At night we are all strangers, even to ourselves.
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
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I am easily persuaded to continue to have fun.
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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Painters aren't expected to paint bleak pictures, are they?
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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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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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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Gracious acceptance is an art - an art which most never bother to cultivate. We think that we have to learn how to give, but we forget about accepting things, which can be much harder than giving.... Accepting another person's gift is allowing him to express his feelings for you.
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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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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And that, in a way, was the burden of being a philosopher: one knew what one had to do, but it was so often the opposite of what one really wanted to do.
Alexander McCall Smith