Top 120 Mhairi McFarlane Quotes (2026 Update)

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— 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. “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

5. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

7. “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

8. “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

9. “Delia realised you should see plenty of people you love, because the meaningful conversations don’t happen in the first twenty four hours together, or forty-eight, or even the first few days. They came at moments like this.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

13. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

15. “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

16. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

18. “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

19. “There’s something exceptional about friendships with friends you’ve known since you were young. They know all the versions of you.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

21. “Seeing someone you know well in a totally different context is always disorientating and vaguely impressive. You realise you have them on loan from the other lives they lead.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

22. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

25. “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

26. “Nothing worthwhile was without risk. You had to decide whether your feelings were strong enough to make it a risk worth taking.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

27. “Don’t expect someone who doesn’t know who they are to care who you are.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

30. “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

31. “Something I’ve learned is people do much worse things to you in the name of love, than they ever do as your enemy.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

32. “Sometimes the truth is messy and difficult but it isn’t always best left. Sometimes it saves you.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

35. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

37. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

39. “I’m sick of being the person who tries to fit in and tells people what they want to hear and acts like nothing bothers her, it’s not got me anywhere.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

41. “She loved him. They’d long ago passed the point where her love was negotiable; it wasn’t contingent on him not being an arsehole. He was her arsehole.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

42. “I wondered, Georgina, if you could imagine being in love with me again, the way I’m in love with you. And that given you’re the best thing to ever happen to me, if you could give me the chance to try to be the best thing that ever happened to you.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

43. “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

44. “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

45. “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

46. “And I was scared my expectations were never going to be met. But I’ve learned it’s better to have unrealistic expectations than none at all.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

49. “Courage calls to courage everywhere.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

50. “There’s shock and then there’s grief, and there’s the simple tiring unending chore of life afterward. These are all different things, I’ve learned.”

— Mhairi McFarlane