Top 120 Mhairi McFarlane Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “The world could do with more Erics and fewer of other people.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

2. “God, whenever I forget why I hate men, one of them reminds me.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

3. “Those who said family mattered above all else were wrong. People you love, who love you back, matter above all. Crap people you happen to be related to: you need to stop thinking you owe them a limitless number of chances to hurt you.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

4. “Part of being grown up is realising that “I don’t want to” is a good enough reason.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

5. “He’s an irrelevant person. Learn to spot irrelevant people. Don’t expect someone who doesn’t know who they are to care who you are.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

6. “Narcissism, manipulation, lack of empathy,” Rav says, counting them off on his fingers, then grabbing for the open bag of chips. “The people who can reel you in and spit you out, without a second’s guilt.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

7. “Saudade,’ Edie said. ‘What?’ Elliot half-shouted over the din, not unreasonably. ‘A Portuguese word that has no direct translation, it means “a profound longing for something or someone that is absent and might never return”.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

8. “No one else is going to fix you. The only person who can fix you, is you.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

9. “It never feels real or finally sinks in. That moment never arrives. The world continues, but with a bit always missing. And meanwhile you’re getting on with it, until it’s found.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

10. “A narcissist has empathy, she once read, they know it affects you – they just don’t care.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

11. “I didn’t know what falling love felt like, I’d never done it before. I discovered you recognise it easily when it arrives.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

12. “The word loss had a new meaning, or its meaning became clear: a person who loved me, in a completely unique and irreplaceable way, had vanished and took with him our relationship.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

13. “La gente no aprecia el manto de invisibilidad del anonimato hasta que se lo desgarran.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

14. “It’s funny we use social media to spy on each other really, given everyone’s telling some degree of lie on there,” Justin says. “There was a photo of a hotel on Trivago doing the rounds because they’d cropped out the nuclear power station behind it. But don’t we all, in a sense, crop out our nuclear power stations?”

— Mhairi McFarlane

15. “There’s something exceptional about friendships with friends you’ve known since you were young. They know all the versions of you. They know how you were built. They have a map for you. There’s a shorthand between you, and a love that is as strong as any blood tie.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

16. “Era tan sorprendente como humillante darse cuenta de la cantidad de tiempo que puedes pasarte con alguien al que no le importas tan poco, y viceversa.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

17. “Here’s what life has taught me so far: don’t worry about that thing you’re worrying about. Chances are, it’ll be obliterated by something you didn’t anticipate that’s a million times worse.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

18. “You choose the person most worth persevering with, that’s all.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

19. “Good women are not a rewards system for silly men.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

20. “There should be a clever word, a German word, for that feeling when someone lets you down and it’s not remotely surprising and yet still shocking.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

21. “You know that this is really rude, right? I mean, you know you can’t stick “no offense” on the end like it takes the curse off?”

— Mhairi McFarlane

22. “All those wasted years spent trying to get inconsequential people to like her. She never asked herself why she should like them.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

23. “And the whole constant mantra about how ‘long-term relationships are hard work’ and ‘everything has its ups and downs’ and ‘you’re going to be annoyed by their toenails’ and ‘stick with it’ and ‘the grass only looks greener’ and so on. It’s actually very hard to tell when you should split up with someone. All I knew was I was waking up every morning thinking this can’t be it, until death. When your relationship is making you feel life’s too long, something’s gone awry.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

24. “After the funeral, Uncle Peter couldn’t have returned to Spain any faster if he’d used Floo Powder.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

25. “Beware the Nicest Guy in the Room, who doesn’t think his failures are the same as everyone else’s.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

26. “This is how it feels in the split second you suddenly become aware that you’re falling in love with someone. The click of a jigsaw’s last piece, the rainfall of coins in a jackpot slot machine, the right song striking up and your being swept away by its opening bars. That conviction of making complete sense of the universe, in one moment. Of course. You’re where I should be. You’re here.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

27. “I shouldn’t have needed to hear what you said last night. I wanted to be everything to you, and instead I was another one of the men who was angry at you for not being able to have you, the way I wanted.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

28. “The only advice people ever take is the advice they want to hear.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

29. “I recall a Tao of Mindy phrase: ‘You can’t polish a turd, but you can roll it in glitter.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

30. “Just because we didn’t get married or stay together forever doesn’t mean it was a waste.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

31. “He wasn’t attractive, as such. He was blandly, boringly competent at having a face.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

32. “Sometimes because the people we wanted to care for us, didn’t care for us, we live with a deliberate lack of care for ourselves. A way of getting back at them, through self-neglect.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

33. “My conclusion is this: there’s no rule that says the unavailable person you waste your life being in love with has to be the greatest human you ever met. It doesn’t make the loss of him any less painful.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

34. “I will never have a friend like her again. Not only because of our affinity, the sheer timescales. You can’t make new old friends. Doors in your life, open and closing.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

35. “When you pass on something that has good things about it, but isn’t good enough, you’re gambling that something one day will feel better, aren’t you? Stick, or twist.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

36. “Don’t waste the young and beautiful years being anxious, darling. There’s plenty of old and ugly ones coming.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

37. “No puedo estar tan cerca de ti sabiendo que es algo de una sola noche.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

38. “I failed you in the most awful way.’ I shake my head. ‘You made decisions without all the information, which I’ve discovered is how we make every decision.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

39. “I’d rather have things go wrong with you than right with anyone else.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

40. “I’m sure you can see why I think I’m worth more than someone who spent sixteen years making up his mind about whether I was worth the hassle.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

41. “No, exactly. He’d be saying, ‘I’m so sorry I let you down at the end.’ But you don’t need his apology. And he wouldn’t need yours.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

42. “Laurie briefly debated saying: You know that this is really rude, right? I mean, you know you can’t stick “no offense” on the end like it takes the curse off? And then made the usual British calculations about the ten seconds of triumph not being worth the hours of embarrassment and hostility afterward.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

43. “She wasn’t sure about being christened the office’s ‘resident sleuth,’ just because she’d discovered the persistent odour in the ladies lavatory had come from an ‘upper decker’ left in one of the cisterns by a discontented male work experience placement who might have deep-rooted issues with women.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

44. “Love is what we call it when we find someone else, but lose ourselves.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

45. “One of the hardest things to explain to a child is why adulthood involved doing so many things you knew you definitely didn’t want to do.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

46. “Put it this way. I’m kind of a communist when it comes to relationships.” “You think we should all be state owned?” “I think whenever they fail, we focus on what specific people did wrong within the system, overlooking the fact that the whole institution’s rotten and dysfunctional.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

47. “I felt safe with you, and in the end that wasn’t enough. I’m sorry.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

48. “The moment where you consider giving in, or do give in, that’s the moment you torture yourself about for the rest of your life. That’s the moment where you think it happened to you because you are a bad and weak person, who wanted it really. When in fact, it’s about survival. And whichever choice you make, it wasn’t really a choice at all.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

49. “I’m not carrying it anymore. I spoke the words aloud, used my words, and broke the curse.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

50. “Love at first sight and all that stuff is crap. It’s just the thrill of your imagination working on insufficient information.”

— Mhairi McFarlane