Mhairi McFarlane Quotes

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

I don't expect to be happy ever after. Just happier.

Some friendships got longer without getting deeper.

Lobster tacos," Emily said, studying the menu and speaking over a remix of Ed Sheeran. "Lobster tacos. Sometimes you feel we've strayed far from God's light, don't you?

When you love someone, you want their happiness even when it's not going to involve you. Even when it depends on your lack of involvement.

In this moment, she made herself a promise: in the very unlikely event she found herself in love with anyone again, she'd assert herself. She'd say what she wanted, not endlessly accommodate his needs. If that made her a bitch at any point, so be it. There were no rewards to being a walkover.

Law that stated you didn't advertise any event you hadn't attended, any place you'd never been, or any band you didn't really listen to.

That special Manchester rain that manages to be both vertical and horizontal at the same time.

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

I was right I couldn't fall in love with you. Because i never fell out of love with you.
-Ben

I'm a lawyer, Rachel. We keep going until we get an answer we believe.

It's pathetic, I knew I did from that first moment we met. It was ... not love at first sight exactly, but - familiarity. Like: oh, hello, it's you. It's going to be you. Game over.
-Ben

Seems once was enough to infect me. From then on you've been lying dormant, like a virus. Or an incurable chronic condition that flares up from time to time.'
A long pause, where life transforms from black-and-white to colour.
'I'm eczema?'
Ben beams. 'Eczema of the heart. That's it. Psoriasis of the soul.

I wanted him to be happy and it was also going to be the thing that hurt the most

Being with the wrong person is lonelier than being on your own. Or it's as lonely, in a different way,

His sadness was almost palpable, like moisture in the air before it rains. Although this was Manchester, it was probably about to rain anyway.

Refusal to listen isn't enough of a response.

London was one of the worst places to have a bad day and one of the best places to have a good day

You won't find someone who treats you as you should be treated until you start to believe you are worth the ones you want, the ones who aren't asking you to do any work. Find the man who appreciates you at your best, not one who confirms your worst suspicions about yourself.

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.

I'm not carrying it anymore. I spoke the words aloud, used my words, and broke the curse.

Men like fun much more than they like clever

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.

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

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

Present company excepted is such an elegantly insulting term, I think, given it clearly means present company especially. It's up there with with all due respect, meaning with no respect whatsoever.

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

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

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.

I like the city late at night, the blasts of music and the splashes of light cast from bars that are still open, shoals of brightly-dressed clubber, the beeping taxis and the greasy, savoury smell of meat and onions from the burger vans.

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.

Words saved me. My words.

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!

You make a nice mum,' I mumbled.

'I always hoped one day the woman of my dreams would say those words to me,' he said, ruffling my vomity hair. I would've poked him in the ribs in reprisal, but I lacked the motor skills.

University's like this little world, a bubble of time separate from everything before and everything after.

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

Funny how, when one part of your life falls away, the other bits that are left start looking rather feeble.

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

An utter walkover with a man who can pen a pretty email

The rule was that they never went to the same place twice

Isn't it weird how we make big decisions in life based on the strangest, most random things?

When there is so much left unsaid, your mind is free to fill in the words that were never exchanged in a hundred thousand different ways...