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
accomplish books fortunate four keeping life personal strict time
I write four books a year. I'm very fortunate that I write quickly; around 3,500 words a day. Being strict about delineating my writing time and personal life, as well as keeping distractions at bay, is the only way I can accomplish this.
life land feet
We should be careful of the insults we fling at others, lest they return and land at our feet, newly minted to apply to those who had first coined them.
philosophy life-is life-philosophy
That my philosophy of life is, as far as possible, one of enjoyment. I'm not nihilistic.
inspirational-life animal land
A life without stories would be no life at all. And stories bound us, did they not, one to another, the living to the dead, people to animals, people to the land?
might this-life enjoy
I see no point in being despondent. We might as well enjoy ourselves during our brief tenure of this life.
inspirational-life years childhood
You can go through life and make new friends every year - every month practically - but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.
life local
The local community is very important in one's life; the feelings of identification with a place and people.
life smaller
If you lose sight of the smaller accomplishments, you end up with an imbalance in your life.
character people mixtures
Some of my characters are a mixture of various aspects of people I have met. others are pure invention.
running believe thinking
We need to believe I think in justice. We need to run our lives as if justice existed. If we abandon a belief that justice will eventually be done, we make this world much more difficult for ourselves.
book mean writing
I write four or five a books a year. That means that I usually have one on the go. I am fortunate in being able to write quickly - 1000 words an hour.
latin school italian
I can read more languages than I speak! I speak French and Italian - not very well, alas, but I can get by. I read German and Spanish. I can read Latin (I did a lot of Latin at school.) I'm afraid I do not speak any African languages, although I can understand a little bit of the Zulu-related languages, but only a tiny bit.
thinking fiction helping
I enjoy women's conversation, and I think that helps me to describe them in fiction.
block thinking concern-for-others
What I really like investigating in my novels: what is it that makes an intimate society, that makes a society in which moral concern for others will be possible? Part of that I think are manners and ritual. We tried to get rid of manners, we tried to abolish manners in the '60s. Manners were very, very old-fashioned and un-cool. And of course we didn't realise that manners are the building blocks of proper moral relationships between people.