Top 120 Mhairi McFarlane Quotes (2024 Update)
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51. “Imagine. Imagine being a man, and thinking your approval has such value, that this sort of oily off-the-cuff compliment can stitch a wound this big.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

52. “If you’re a mistake you’re the greatest one ever made. I’m really proud to know you.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

53. “It was everything I could ever want, to be honest. You are everything I could ever want.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

54. “Very few people voluntarily make things worse for themselves, if they have a choice. You know, there’s the way we all like to think we behave, and then there’s the way we actually do.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

55. “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

56. “I wonder what she wants?′ Sam said. ‘Apart from Cal’s balls and soul trapped in a haunted jam jar.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

57. “Some friendships got longer without getting deeper.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

58. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

60. “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

61. “You need people to like you. Stop caring so much. It doesn’t matter.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

62. “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

63. “Being single means getting used to your own company and not inventing excuses to keep people around you, None of which makes me feel any less bereft. The latest revelation: you have to relearn being your own again!”

— Mhairi McFarlane

64. “Why are things, abandoned things, so hard to bear? They didn’t have that quality before. And compared to the living thing you’ve lost, they’re without value.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

65. “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

66. “She thought there was a lot of truth in the closest friendships being unconsummated romances.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

67. “Beauty isn’t an arrangement of features, even features as perfect as Finlay Hart’s, it’s a feeling. This is how it feels in the split second you suddenly become aware that you’re falling in love with someone.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

68. “I notice, once again, that company that’s not the right fit for you is so much lonelier than being happily alone.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

69. “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

70. “Why did a woman’s voice have to be a chorus, to count?”

— Mhairi McFarlane

71. “Cuando se trata de ti, lo recuerdo todo.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

72. “Sorry,’ he mutters back, in that reflexive British way where you’re apologetic that someone else has had to make an apology.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

73. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

76. “Single Anna was whole Anna. Not finding someone wasn’t a failure, it was just a fact.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

77. “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

78. “It was really interesting to me, unravelling why we behave the way we do.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

80. “It was fear, cloaked in rationalisations and self-deprecation.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

84. “I thought the speech about how I was dementedly in love with you was enough encouragement, if that’s what you needed.’ ‘In love with me twelve years ago.’ ‘Why would that have changed? Nothing’s changed. Actually, that’s not true. I feel even more for you now than I did then.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

85. “It’s very powerful to know you can cope. You can do anything after that.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

86. “The things we do to avoid difficult things are often worse than the difficult thing.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

87. “I ponder how many mistakes in life are born of a simple fear of being rude.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

88. “When I say he’s not rude, what I really mean is he’s male and moneyed and got to that age where we allow him his chosen degree of rude as some sort of social entitlement, along with his bus pass.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

89. “At least when I don’t like myself, I still know who I am. You have a face for every occasion. When you’re on your own, you must disappear. Who are you, when no one’s looking?”

— Mhairi McFarlane

90. “No wonder we play ‘the what’s for you, won’t pass you’ mind games with ourselves, when the brutal senselessness is so hard to swallow.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

91. “London was one of the worst places to have a bad day and one of the best places to have a good day.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

92. “Uncovering an affair wasn’t a one big fact headline story. It was like Metroyshka dolls, lies inside lies inside lies.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

93. “I was a natural show-off who hates being the center of attention:.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

94. “I saw the love of my life about to walk out and I thought complete honesty would mean losing you forever. It’s taken me until now to see that complete honesty was my only hope.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

95. “He was, Harriet always said to herself and others, an incredibly, ludicrously nice guy. So, given her increasing doubts, what did that make her?”

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

97. “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

98. “No one, not even Prince at the height of his fame, Laurie reckoned, could maintain their adulthood persona around their parents. Your closest family returned you to whence you’d came, when you were still a work in progress. They weren’t fooled for a second. Older you was a construct.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

99. “When I spoke, he concentrated on me intently. Through Lucas’s fascination, I saw myself differently. I was worthy. I didn’t have to try so hard.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

100. “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