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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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Alexander McCall Smith
Age: 76
Born: 1948
Born: August 24
Novelist
Teacher
Writer
Alexander Sandy McCall Smith
Come
Entertaining
Mind
Check
Time
Possibilities
Checks
Minds
Possibility
Close
Keep

More quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

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Lou knew that joy unshared was a halved emotion, just as sadness and loss, when borne alone, were often doubled.
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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.
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When you allow people to do what they wish, then that is what they do. They stop doing the things they need to do.
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I'm interested in character and dialogue and exchange of ideas.
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I'm very interested in tea. I wouldn't mind being involved in some aspect of the tea industry.
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There are many women whose lives would be immeasurably improved by widowhood, but one should not always point that out.
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At night we are all strangers, even to ourselves.
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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
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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...
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I cannot see myself in a new car. I am a tiny white van person. That is what i want!
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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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The people with the strong, brave exteriors are just as weak and vulnerable as the rest of us. And of course they never admit to their childish practices, their moments of weakness or absurdity, and then the rest of us think that's how it should be.
Alexander McCall Smith
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Talking about pumpkins doesn't make them grow.
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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Manners are the basic building blocks of civil society.
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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.
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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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The telling of a story, like virtually everything in this life, was always made all the easier by a cup of tea.
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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I have three older sisters, so we were a reasonably large family and, in general, a happy one.
Alexander McCall Smith