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
lying half distinction
There was a distinction between lying and telling half-truths, but it was a very narrow one.
self appreciate doe
Self-pity does not appreciate pedantry.
talking pumpkin grows
Talking about pumpkins doesn't make them grow.
opposites way moral
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.
different old-love illness
It's a different sort of love taht puts up with illness. Old love.
sight accomplishment imbalance
If you lose sight of the smaller accomplishments , you end up with an imbalance in your life.
envy people unhappy
Antonia was very conscious of the corrosive power of envy and felt that it was this emotion, more than any other, which lay behind human unhappiness. People did not realize how widespread envy was.
happiness irony sometimes
It is sometimes easier to be happy if you don't know everything.
boredom people london
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...
thinking rights sight
I think that we've made great moral progress in the second half of the 20th century in many respects, and particularly in relation to human rights but I think that we are losing sight of some of the values of concern for others, and self-respect and respect for others.
character ideas dialogue
I'm interested in character and dialogue and exchange of ideas.
pigs wonderful creatures
Who can't like pigs? They're wonderful creatures! I've always liked pigs.
beautiful thinking clouds
They're very beautiful, aren't they? Clouds are very beautiful and yet so often we fail to appreciate them properly. We should do that. We should look at them and think about how lucky we are to have them.
memories sky smell
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.