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.
block building manners
Manners are the basic building blocks of civil society.
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.
differences people work-out
The problem, of course, was that people did not seem to understand the difference between right and wrong. They needed to be reminded about this, because if you left it to them to work out for themselves, they would never bother. They would just find out what was best for them, and then they would call that the right thing. That's how most people thought.
has-beens
Everything has been something before.
agency typewriters mma
Mma Ramotswe had a detective agency in Africa, at the foot of Kgale Hill. These were its assets: a tiny white van, two desks, two chairs, a telephone, and an old typewriter. Then there was a teapot, in which Mma Ramotswe – the only lady private detective in Botswana – brewed redbush tea. And three mugs – one for herself, one for her secretary, and one for the client. What else does a detective agency really need? Detective agencies rely on human intuition and intelligence, both of which Mma Ramotswe had in abundance. No inventory would ever include those, of course.
simple mma answers
Simple questions--and simple answers--were what we needed in life. That was what Mma Ramotswe believed. Yes.