“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”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“Do nothing, and nothing happens. Life is about decisions. You either make them or they're made for you, but you can't avoid them.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“I was right I couldn't fall in love with you. Because i never fell out of love with you."
-Ben”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“University's like this little world, a bubble of time separate from everything before and everything after.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“Isn't it weird how we make big decisions in life based on the strangest, most random things?”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“I wanted him to be happy and it was also going to be the thing that hurt the most”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“His sadness was almost palpable, like moisture in the air before it rains. Although this was Manchester, it was probably about to rain anyway.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“Being with the wrong person is lonelier than being on your own. Or it’s as lonely, in a different way,”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“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.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“I thought it would all fall into place. I've changed my mind. Do nothing, and nothing happens. Life is about decisions. You either make them or they’re made for you, but you can’t avoid them.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“...the life with him you feel like you lost out on, it’s perfect because it’s a fantasy and it’s a fantasy because it’s perfect.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“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.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“I don't expect to be happy ever after. Just happier.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“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.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“Funny how, when one part of your life falls away, the other bits that are left start looking rather feeble.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“...I think you’re bound to feel guilty, and you’re going to feel sad. You have to simply feel it. Don’t hate yourself. It is what it is.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“Refusal to listen isn’t enough of a response.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“... 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.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“«Porque la simple idea de que me hayas olvidado, como si fuera un archivo inservible, y me hayas arrastrado hasta el icono de papelera de reciclaje de tu cerebro, hace que tenga pesadillas que me producen la misma ansiedad que soñar que estoy desnuda en medio de la calle con todo el mundo mirándome.»”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“I’m a lawyer, Rachel. We keep going until we get an answer we believe.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“My point is, the life with him you feel like you lost out on, it’s perfect because it’s a fantasy and it’s a fantasy because it’s perfect.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“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, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“Pensaba que todo pasaría cuando tuviera que pasar. He cambiado de opinión. Si no haces nada, no ocurre nada. La vida es cuestión de decisiones. O las tomas, o alguien las toma por ti, pero no puedes evitarlas.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“Estar con la persona equivocada puede hacer que te sientas más sola que si no estuvieras con nadie. O provoca otro tipo de soledad, pero soledad al fin y al cabo.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“that special Manchester rain that manages to be both vertical and horizontal at the same time.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“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.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“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.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“La esperanza me ha abandonado. Ha sido como si se filtrara a través de mi cuerpo, se convirtiera en un charco a mis pies y se evaporara a través del techo de la biblioteca.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“Es una combinación extraña; por un lado, el ilícito placer que me ha producido el volver a verlo —¡y él quiere repetir!—, y por otro, la desazón de comprobar que su vida va viento en popa y la mía no.”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
“A veces pienso que me hace falta llevar un GPS para la vida amarrado al cinturón que me dé órdenes con voz autoritaria. «A la primera oportunidad, cambie de sentido.»”
― Mhairi McFarlane, quote from You Had Me At Hello
Mhairi McFarlane
Born place: The United Kingdom
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“...."the sound of a barrel organ rising from the deepest golden vein of the day; two or three bars of a chorus, played on a distant piano over and over again, melting in the sun on the white pavement, lost in the fire of high noon.”
― Bruno Schulz, quote from The Street of Crocodiles and Other Stories
“I drove to the doctor's office as if I was starring in a movie Phillip was watching -- windows down, hair blowing, just one hand on the wheel. When I stopped at red lights, I kept my eyes mysteriously forward. Who is she? people might have been wondering. Who is that middle-aged woman in the blue Honda?”
― Miranda July, quote from The First Bad Man
“Chiefs and kings and emperors have used their increasingly large carrots and sticks to enforce productive cooperation (and skim the proceeds off the top). According to the seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes, this is a good thing. He praised the king for being a peace-keeping Leviathan, the earthly god who lifts us out of our natural state, in which life is “nasty, brutish, and short.” Leviathans”
― Joshua D. Greene, quote from Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
“The intelligent want self-control; children want candy. —RUMI INTRODUCTION Welcome to Willpower 101 Whenever I mention that I teach a course on willpower, the nearly universal response is, “Oh, that’s what I need.” Now more than ever, people realize that willpower—the ability to control their attention, emotions, and desires—influences their physical health, financial security, relationships, and professional success. We all know this. We know we’re supposed to be in control of every aspect of our lives, from what we eat to what we do, say, and buy. And yet, most people feel like willpower failures—in control one moment but overwhelmed and out of control the next. According to the American Psychological Association, Americans name lack of willpower as the number-one reason they struggle to meet their goals. Many feel guilty about letting themselves and others down. Others feel at the mercy of their thoughts, emotions, and cravings, their lives dictated by impulses rather than conscious choices. Even the best-controlled feel a kind of exhaustion at keeping it all together and wonder if life is supposed to be such a struggle. As a health psychologist and educator for the Stanford School of Medicine’s Health Improvement Program, my job is to help people manage stress and make healthy choices. After years of watching people struggle to change their thoughts, emotions, bodies, and habits, I realized that much of what people believed about willpower was sabotaging their success and creating unnecessary stress. Although scientific research had much to say that could help them, it was clear that these insights had not yet become part of public understanding. Instead, people continued to rely on worn-out strategies for self-control. I saw again and again that the strategies most people use weren’t just ineffective—they actually backfired, leading to self-sabotage and losing control. This led me to create “The Science of Willpower,” a class offered to the public through Stanford University’s Continuing Studies program. The course brings together the newest insights about self-control from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine to explain how we can break old habits and create healthy habits, conquer procrastination, find our focus, and manage stress. It illuminates why we give in to temptation and how we can find the strength to resist. It demonstrates the importance of understanding the limits of self-control,”
― Kelly McGonigal, quote from The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It
“The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off.
Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people’s faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity.
When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes?
That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the façade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing.
(describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)”
― quote from Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
Ethics for the New M...
When the Heart Waits...
The Cheese Monkeys
Lame Deer, Seeker of...BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
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