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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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Alexander McCall Smith
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: August 24
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Alexander Sandy McCall Smith
Also
Practise
Book
Discouraged
Writing
Persist
Things
Lots
Never
Books
Read
Write
Two
More quotes by Alexander McCall Smith
She was made for untidy rooms and rumpled beds.
Alexander McCall Smith
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
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
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
The Culture of Complaint... We live in a culture of complaint because everyone is always looking for things to complain about. It's all tied in with the desire to blame others for misfortunes and to get some form of compensation into the bargain.
Alexander McCall Smith
[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
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
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
There are old mycologists and there are bold mycologists, but there are no old, bold mycologists.
Alexander McCall Smith
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
Simple questions--and simple answers--were what we needed in life. That was what Mma Ramotswe believed. Yes.
Alexander McCall Smith
I cannot see myself in a new car. I am a tiny white van person. That is what i want!
Alexander McCall Smith
It's a different sort of love taht puts up with illness. Old love.
Alexander McCall Smith
Edinburgh used to be a haughty city.
Alexander McCall Smith
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
International business, once allowed to stalk uncontrolled, killed the local, the small, the quirky.
Alexander McCall Smith
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
I enjoy women's conversation, and I think that helps me to describe them in fiction.
Alexander McCall Smith
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
Talking about pumpkins doesn't make them grow.
Alexander McCall Smith
