Alexander McCall Smith
Alexander McCall Smith
R. Alexander "Sandy" McCall Smith, CBE, FRSE, is a British writer and Emeritus Professor of Medical Law at the University of Edinburgh. In the late 20th century, McCall Smith became a respected expert on medical law and bioethics and served on British and international committees concerned with these issues...
NationalityScottish
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth24 August 1948
Alexander McCall Smith quotes about
moved music opera people
The point of opera is that people are moved by the emotions and music.
hook novels serial
Serial novels have an unexpected effect; they hook the writer as well as the reader.
life smaller
If you lose sight of the smaller accomplishments, you end up with an imbalance in your life.
life local
The local community is very important in one's life; the feelings of identification with a place and people.
books constant country fed great lives paint people picture pleased portray positive poverty problems puts reporting success welcome
I think people in Botswana are pleased that my books paint a positive picture of their lives and portray the country as being very special. They've made a great success of their country, and the people are fed up with the constant reporting of only the problems and poverty of the continent. They welcome something which puts the positive side.
country intimacy million people related tend
There is this intimacy still in Botswana. It's a country of just under two million people, and there's this sense of connectedness, in that people tend to be related to one another.
idle capable
I am capable of being idle.
suffering-of-others imagination moral
It's through the small things that we develop our moral imagination, so that we can understand the sufferings of others.
opposites way philosopher
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.
has-beens
Everything has been something before.
tiny earth persons
I am just a tiny person in Africa, but there is a place for me, and for everybody, to sit down on this earth and touch it and call it their own.
offending wider
The wider your readership, the greater the chances of offending your readers.
frailty human point
You do not have to ladle on the impasto to make a point about human frailty or ambitions.
perhaps
You're always told by your publisher that you must only write one book a year and some years you should perhaps write none at all.