Top 120 Mhairi McFarlane Quotes (2026 Update)
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51. “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

52. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

54. “Courage calls to courage everywhere.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

55. “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

56. “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

57. “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

58. “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

59. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

62. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

64. “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

65. “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

66. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

69. “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

70. “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

71. “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

72. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

74. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

76. “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

77. “Don’t be so bloody British,’ he said. ‘This country. We’d rather quietly kill ourselves over something than be any bother.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

78. “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

79. “The way he undermines you gradually: it’s so hard to explain until you’ve been through it. He waits until you’re in love and completely vulnerable and then it starts, and you have no defences.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

81. “She’d guessed it was partly borne of a private education. Now she pictured him on yachts, as well as attending Hogwarts.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

82. “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

83. “The panic that her voice, the way she spoke, her attitude, all that was unique and specific to her, would pass into history. I wanted her to be here, and for her contributions and opinions to still be with us. That she is past tense, feels so impossible, when she was so vividly alive.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

84. “As I once reasoned to a colleague, however: some people are tolerable, and life requires you to tolerate them, and there’s only two ways of releasing the pressure. One, letting loose at the individual winding you up, or two, bitching mercilessly behind their back.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

87. “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

88. “Laurie,” he said quietly. Not a question, or an opening to saying anything else. A full sentence in itself.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

89. “You didn’t want me enough, when choosing me became harder.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

90. “You know, now our generation doesn’t have to get married – and thank goodness for that – it’s easy to think it’s a superfluous nonsense, and sometimes weddings are. But it’s also easy to forget how absolutely fantastic they can be.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

91. “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

92. “I don’t expect to be happy ever after. Just happier.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

93. “Men like fun much more than they like clever.”

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

95. “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

96. “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

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane

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

— Mhairi McFarlane