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I enjoy women's conversation, and I think that helps me to describe them in fiction.

Alexander McCall Smith

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Alexander McCall Smith
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: August 24
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Alexander Sandy McCall Smith
Women
Think
Thinking
Describe
Helps
Conversation
Fiction
Enjoy
Helping

More quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

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Each of us is born into our own mysteries but the mystery of another might just take us in and embrace us. And then what a sense of homecoming, of belonging!
Alexander McCall Smith
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Many of my books are written from a female perspective. I rather enjoy the take that women have on the world, and certainly I enjoy the conversations that women have.
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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My parents were very supportive and always encouraged us. My father was a gentle, nice man. My mother was quite a colourful character and a keen reader who encouraged me to write.
Alexander McCall Smith
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The previously unloved may find it hard to believe that they are now loved that is such a miracle, they feel such a miracle.
Alexander McCall Smith
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I've always had a creative urge and I get immense satisfaction from creating something because it feels like I'm making sense of the world and imposing order on it.
Alexander McCall Smith
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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
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I would certainly never consider myself a Renaissance Man I'm not fit to look at the dust from the chariot wheels of many of those who have gone before me.
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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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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I am capable of being idle.
Alexander McCall Smith
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There is room in history for all of us.
Alexander McCall Smith
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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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It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.
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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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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That of all people, it should be him that took her aback. That the heart should settle on somebody like him that surprised her. But she was so certain about it, so certain.
Alexander McCall Smith
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It's a different sort of love taht puts up with illness. Old love.
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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Manners are the basic building blocks of civil society.
Alexander McCall Smith