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Poems are different from, say, the narrative of a novel or a short story. A poem is rather like a piece of music. You don't say to a composer: “could you put in a few more C-sharps in that piece?”

— Alexander McCall Smith

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More quotes by Alexander McCall Smith

We think the world is ours forever, but we are little more than squatters.

One might expect bad behaviour from existentialists – indeed that was what existentialism was all about, was it not? – but to find this happening on one’s own doorstep was a shock.

It would be wonderful to have a guru; it would be like having a social worker or a personal trainer, not that people who had either of these necessarily appreciated the advice they received.

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.

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.

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Alexander McCall Smith (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.