A Quote by Alexander McCall Smith

Writers obviously have to bear witness to the harsh face of the age.

Alexander McCall Smith

Quote Topics

Age Bear Face Harsh Obviously Witness Writers

Quote Author

Alexander McCall Smith
Scottish - Writer
Born: August 24, 1948

I tell myself I bear witness. The real answer is that it's obviously my programming. And I lack the constitution for suicide.

Matthew McConaughey

The French press can be very harsh, and the one thing they can't bear is multi-tasking. They despise it to the highest degree, so from the age of five I've been taught that if I did two things at the same time, it meant I didn't know how to do one. It's an obsession that they have.

Lou Doillon

As a writer, I tend to be drawn to marginal people - writers, poet-prophets, seers, eccentrics - who embody the deeper ambivalences of their societies and bear deeper witness to their world than the famous figures we are used to celebrating, or demonizing, in our histories.

Pankaj Mishra

Even under a harsh God-and I do not believe in a harsh God-one is entitled to serenity in old age.

Albert Outler

There are landscapes and species that are not going to be here a hundred years from now, fifty years from now. One gift we as writers give to the world is to bear witness to these landscapes and species as we have experienced them.

Alison Hawthorne Deming

In the face of events that threaten to overwhelm our lives, storytelling gives us a way of reclaiming ourselves and reaffirming our connections with other people-those who listen to our stories and, by doing so, bear witness with us.

Victoria Alexander

I now know why people break up in e-mails and text messages. Doing it face-to-face is so hard because you have to stand in front of the person and witness their reaction. Face their wrath.

Simone Elkeles

I am very harsh on myself. I can point out a list. My nose is very strange. I have a very round face. I sound so ungrateful. Obviously I'm being hard on myself. Whether it's body dysmorphia, or whatever it is, I can always find something wrong.

Emily Meade

I add my personal witness: Our missionaries are not salesmen with wares to peddle; rather, they are servants of the Most High God, with testimonies to bear, truths to teach, and souls to save. Each missionary who goes forth in response to a sacred call becomes a servant of the Lord whose work this truly is. Do not fear, young men, for He will be with you. He never fails. He has promised: "I will go before your face. I will be on your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up"

Thomas S. Monson

I've met writers who wanted to be writers from the age of six, but I certainly had no feelings like that. It was only in the Philippines when I was about 15 that I started reading books by very contemporary writers of the Beatnik generation.

Romesh Gunesekera

When we bear witness, when we become the situation - homelessness, poverty, illness, violence, death - the right action arises by itself. We don't have to worry about what to do. We don't have to figure out solutions ahead of time. Peacemaking is the functioning of bearing witness. Once we listen with our entire body and mind, loving action arises.