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

— 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. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

9. “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

10. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

12. “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

13. “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

14. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

17. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

19. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

23. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

26. “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

27. “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

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

— 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. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

32. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

34. “Life’s veered sharply away from the script. We’re traveling a branch of an alternative future we were never meant to be on.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

35. “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

36. “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

37. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

39. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

41. “The way I see it,’ Edie said, holding both their hands, as they looked at the water rushing over the rocks, ’you get people who are important to you, for as long as you get them. You never know how long it will be. You have to accept it and make use of the time you have.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

42. “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

43. “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

44. “I wondered if you wanted someone to help zip your dress up before a night out. I wondered if you wanted someone to call first in a crisis. I wondered if you wanted someone to text to bring you fish and chips when you can’t be arsed with a proper dinner. I wondered if you wanted someone in your corner when you visit your family, someone who will tell them how lucky they are to have you. I wondered if you wanted someone to fetch the Lucozade when you have the flu.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

45. “I know this is weak, but, I’m thirty-four, and on the horizon I can see ‘not being blatantly hit on by twenty-something barmen any more’. Like the Next sale on Boxing Day, I am suddenly interested in grabbing something that doesn’t suit me and I will soon regret, just because I can.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

49. “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

50. “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