top of page

Don't You Forget About Me
by Mhairi McFarlane

DontYouForgetAboutMe_text.jpg

“I was furious afterward, the kind of fury you reserve for people who accuse you of something that’s absolutely true.” (p. 3)

 

“In all our lives, heartbreak and humor coexist.” (p. 4, notes)

 

“Something and everything had changed. I didn’t know yet that small moments can be incredibly large.” (p. 6)

 

“He put nothing on show, you had to find it out for yourself: not the deadpan quick humor, not the good looks he could’ve worn conspicuously simply by walking all, not the sharp intelligence. He was self-contained. By contrast, I felt uncontained.” (p. 8) 

 

“To be honest, a lot of counseling appears to be accepting you’re up to your tits in shit and finding you’re zen about it.” (p. 94)

 

“Am I being obtuse, trying too hard? Showing off? Dad once told me I was a natural show-off who hates being the center of attention: “a paradox you will have to resolve one day.”” (p. 103)

 

“My coat, my choice. My bravado is a veneer. I’m as much a combination of outward bolshiness and inward terror of inadequacy as I was when I was an adolescent.” (p. 128)

 

 “...I chose a mid-length navy coat with bracelet-length balloon sleeves and a belt tie and big collar. I admit, as Mom chorused approval and I turned this way and that in the mirror, it made me feel quite elegant. A bit like a vampish woman in a black-and-white film who’d say, “Promise me we’ll be together when this horrid war is over,” next to a steam train.” (p. 405)

 

“I want to get a First, not to be obnoxious, but to prove that there’s no shame in traveling the long way around to get where you want to go. It doesn’t matter if you take wrong turns. Arriving somewhere you want to be, in the end, is what counts.

So I reach out into the past, take the hand of that vulnerable, hopeful girl I used to be, and pull her forward to join me.” (p. 408)

 

“So - when I say I wondered if you’d like to go for dinner sometime…” Lucas draws breath and continues: “What I really wonder is, if you too hope we have one of those first dates that turns into days and nights, not only due to lust but because we can’t stand to be apart.” (p. 414)

 

“I thought nothing could rival how we felt as teenagers, but I was wrong. This time is better. This time, we’re not blank sheets of paper, we’re grown-ups who’ve written who we are, who’ve decided who we want to be. We’re bringing so much more to each other, and saying we want to share it.” (p. 417)

 

“A small moment is incredibly large, and everything has changed.” (p. 418)

bottom of page