Chocolate Cake for Breakfast Quotes

“What do you think of this stuff?’ he asked.

I looked at the bottle and discovered that it contained a miracle udder liniment, guaranteed to reduce pain and swelling. ‘I’ve seen the ad in the Dairy Exporter, but that’s about it,’ I said. ‘Does it work?’ Personally I doubted that it would, since it’s a bit of a stretch to ask something you rub on the skin to kill the bacteria lurking in the tissues ten centimetres down, but I had learnt through bitter experience that belittling someone’s pet alternative treatment is almost as offensive as telling them their kid looks funny. (My all-time low was attending a cat after-hours wearing a T-shirt which read Homeopathy, making damn-all difference since 1796, and then learning that the cat’s owner was a certified homeopath.)”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“Dentists don’t really approve of eating between meals, but if you must snack at least let it be dairy. Or bread. But never raisins – the very thought almost prostrates them with horror.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“You were in second-stage labour for more than five hours?’

‘That’s not bad, for a first baby. I was lucky.’

‘Proper full-on contractions?’ I asked. ‘For all that time?’

Em nodded.

‘And it wasn’t that bad?’

She shook her head, smiling.

‘Dad?’ I asked suspiciously. ‘Is this true?’

‘Not having been the one doing it, I couldn’t tell you. But I must say it didn’t look like a whole lot of fun from where I was standing,’ said Dad.

‘I knew it!’

‘It’s just the price humans pay for walking on our hind legs and having large brains,’ said Dad. ‘Very poor design, really – mothers with narrow pelvises and babies with big heads. I read somewhere that childbirth used to kill about one woman in ten. The rate of stillborn babies would have been much higher again, of course.’

‘One in ten?’ Mark repeated faintly.

‘About that. Not really a problem if you’re thinking survival of the species, but pretty rough on the individual. Don’t worry, Helen, medicine’s come a long way in the last couple of hundred years.’

‘Dad, I’m not scared I’m going to die. I’m just scared it’s going to hurt a lot.’

‘And she’ll probably get torn from arsehole to breakfast,’ Caitlin put in, carefully pushing her green beans to the side of her plate.

Mark choked.

‘Pardon me?’ Em said.

‘Granny said it.’

‘Granny,’ said Em grimly, ‘is an old witch.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“I’m so jealous,’ said Keri. ‘No more work, living with Mark Tipene . . . Shopping with Mark Tipene’s credit card . . .’

‘That’s right,’ I said, wiping my eyes. ‘I’ll just float from lunch date to hair appointment to Pilates class.’

‘You might want to wash the cow shit off your neck first,’ Nick said. ‘Pass the pizza, would you, Richard?’

‘I’ve been in the clinic all afternoon,’ I said. ‘Could you not have mentioned the cow shit earlier?’

‘It’s only a little smear. And it brings out your eyes.’

‘Thank you. That’s so sweet.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“What’s up?’ he asked.

‘Would you mind if I went on maternity leave a bit earlier than I was going to?’

‘When were you thinking?’

‘Another few weeks?’ I asked tentatively.

Nick sat back in his chair and looked at me. ‘I thought you were planning to stop on the side of the road somewhere between calvings to produce this child, and then tie it on your back and keep going,’ he said.

‘There’s been a slight change of plan. I’m going to go and live with Mark instead.’

‘Are you now? Well, that would have to be a step in the right direction.’

‘Mm,’ I said, feeling my cheeks get hot. It would have been nice to think I’d succeeded in hiding the shambles of my love life from my colleagues behind a facade of dignified calm, but evidently I hadn’t.

‘So presumably you won’t be coming back to work,’ he said.

I shook my head. ‘I’m so sorry to be leaving you in the lurch.’

‘That’s alright,’ said Nick. ‘We’ll manage. Although I must say it would have been a lot more considerate of you to get yourself knocked up by someone local.’

‘Then you’d never have got rid of me,’ I pointed out.

‘Well, there is that,’ he said, returning to his paperwork.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“I’ve always remembered the celebrant at my friend Eileen’s wedding saying that one of the most important things in marriage is for the woman to abandon herself to her husband,’ Em said. ‘Not to submit to him, or obey his every wish, but just to trust him completely with her heart.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“You know, I reckon you’ve had a narrow escape. I was reading an article about early-onset arthritis in rugby players, and apparently the whole lot of them are cripples by the time they get to sixty. And they’re the ones who are sixty now; they played a hell of a lot less games forty years ago.’

‘But they patch them up a lot better these days,’ I pointed out.

‘There’s still not much you can do about having no cartilage left in any of your joints.’

‘They can replace knees and hips.’

‘Not shoulders. Or fingers. How many of them has he dislocated?’

‘I don’t know. A few.’

‘There you go. Those’ll all be buggered in another ten years. You would have ended up wiping his bum for him.’

‘I wouldn’t have minded,’ I muttered.

He passed me out a handful of bolts and shuffled along to the next corner. ‘You’re pathetic. And there’s another reason you should have been heading for the hills.’

‘What?’ I asked.

‘Do you know what the All Blacks’ motto is?’

‘“Feed your backs”?’

‘Nope. It is – and I kid you not – “Subdue and penetrate”.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Google it then.’

‘Maybe it didn’t sound so dodgy a hundred years ago when they came up with it,’ I said weakly.

‘Of course it did. It’s not like human biology’s changed since then. Very shady people, rugby players.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“Sobbing in the dark while the rain beats against the windscreen certainly is marvellously atmospheric, but eventually I tired of it, climbed laboriously out of the ute and went inside.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“Well,’ said Em a few days later, putting her bottle of nail polish down on the coffee table and looking critically at her handiwork, ‘personally, I never thought he was much of a rugby player.’

Seeing as Em’s knowledge of rugby was probably somewhere on a par with Kim Kardashian’s, this was not a particularly damning condemnation.

‘He’s big and strong,’ she continued, ‘but all he does is run into people and try to rip the ball off them.’

‘Em, that’s pretty much the job description,’ I said. Rugby’s really fairly straightforward – the forwards try to pulverise each other, and then the backs skip lightly through the holes in the opposition’s defence to score the tries. Forwards can score tries, but it’s not their key role and they like to pretend it’s no big deal. A manly nod of acknowledgement once the ball is planted over the line is acceptable, but victory dances, like fancy hairstyles, are left to the backs”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“This information was surprisingly comforting. ‘Thanks, Em,’ I said. ‘Hey, what did Lachlan Johnson do?’

‘He rubbed poo in another child’s hair. His own poo. He brought it to school in a little container.’

‘What – “Here’s one I prepared earlier”?’

‘Exactly,’ said Em solemnly. ‘It was a premeditated act.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“Helen, what would you like to drink?’ Saskia asked. ‘Wine, beer, cider, juice, soft drink . . . ?’

‘Wine, please.’

‘Red or white?’

‘White.’

She opened the fridge. ‘Sav, chardonnay, pinot gris or riesling?’

‘Pinot gris, please,’ I said, slightly dazed by the number of options.

‘Mission Estate or Greywacke?’

‘Whichever’s closest.’

‘They’re both equally close,’ she said inexorably.

‘Greywacke,’ I said, and accepted my glass feeling I had earned it.

‘Excellent choice,’ said Saskia, pouring one for herself.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“I sat down in an outdoor chair and Bel began to climb into my lap. ‘Hey,’ I protested, fending her off, ‘you’re all wet and cold.’

‘I just want to give you a cuddle,’ she said plaintively, putting on her starving-orphan-all-alone-in-the-world face. I was moved less to remorse than to admiration – pulling off that expression with dimples and a round rosy face like a Renaissance cherub was impressive.

‘I’ll cuddle you when you’re dry,’ I told her.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“Just leave him alone, I told myself miserably. He’s hoping you’re asleep. But I reached out a tentative hand for his, on the slim off-chance that I might be wrong.

His fingers closed around mine. ‘Feeling a bit better?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘That’s good.’

I wriggled across the mattress and propped myself up on one elbow to kiss him.

‘Sure you’re not going to spew?’ he asked, running a hand over my hair.

‘Pretty sure,’ I said.

‘I’m not sure pretty sure is sure enough.’ But I could hear that he was smiling, and he pulled me down on top of him. ‘Oh, what the hell. I like living dangerously.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“Crikey,’ I said.

‘I’m told that this place has all the warmth and charm of a lawyer’s waiting room,’ said Mark.

It did, too. The walls and flooring and kitchen cabinets were all beige, and the furnishings black. The only touch of colour was provided by two big canvases on the far wall, each one sporting a single red squiggle on a white background. I find it hard to be impressed by art that looks like it took longer to hang straight on the wall than it did to produce. However, those whose living rooms are a symphony of plum and orange are in no position to criticise anybody else’s interior design. And perhaps he loved it.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“He moved over to make room for me and I slid under the covers beside him. There was a short silence, and he ran his hand up my leg from knee to hip. ‘I thought you didn’t like these,’ he said, tracing the lacy hem of the scarlet knickers.

‘Oh, well, I thought you might.’

‘I do. Please pass on my thanks to your stepmother.’

‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘I think not.’

‘Spoilsport.’

‘You could always tell her yourself.’

‘Fair enough,’ he said serenely. ‘I will.’

I kicked him.

‘Stop that,’ he ordered, rolling over and pinning my legs with his.

‘You’re so hot,’ I said.

‘Thanks,’ said Mark, smiling. ‘I work out.’

‘I meant your body temperature, you weenie.’ I lifted my head off the pillow to kiss his nose, which was nice and handy.

‘What’s your dad like?’ he asked.

I was a little startled by this abrupt change of subject. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘he’s about six foot seven, a fundamentalist Christian, collects guns, very protective of his daughters . . . Ow!’

‘We’ll try that again, shall we?’

‘Biting people is not cool,’ I said sternly.

‘Toughen up, McNeil, it didn’t even break the skin.’

‘I can see the headlines now. Innocent Girl Bitten by Crazed All Black. Wound Turns Septic. Major Surgery Required . . .’

‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Amputation at the neck.’

‘The ultimate solution.’

‘So,’ he repeated patiently, ‘what’s your dad like?’

‘Lovely,’ I said.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“Coffee?’ he called from downstairs.

I went and looked down from the low wall overlooking the kitchen. ‘Yes, please.’

‘Real coffee, or instant?’

‘Instant’s good,’ I said, and went downstairs to see him reach down two mugs from a shelf in his beige and steel kitchen.

‘Milk?’ he asked, spooning instant coffee from a metal canister.

‘Yes, please.’

He added milk, filled both mugs from a tap in the corner of the sink and passed one over.

I looked at it doubtfully – I hadn’t expected to have to request specifically that my coffee be made with hot water – and saw a reassuring wisp of steam. ‘Do you have boiling water on tap?’ I asked.

‘Yep. Cool, eh?’

‘Extremely cool,’ I said.

‘And the fridge makes its own ice.’

‘Far out, brussel sprout.’

‘I know. It’s pretty incredible,’ he said.

‘Do you have a robot to do your vacuuming, like on The Jetsons?’

‘No,’ he admitted. ‘Sorry.’

‘Oh well, never mind. The tap’s still impressive.’

‘Thanks.’ He leant over and kissed me. ‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning.’

'What do you want to do today?’

‘Whatever you like,’ I said dreamily. ‘I don’t mind.’

‘You’re really not the high-maintenance type, are you?’

‘I’m just lulling you into a false sense of security,’ I explained. ‘Then I’ll start demanding fur coats and Porsches.’

‘I see,’ said Mark.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“Em answered the phone on the second ring. ‘Hello?’

‘Hey,’ I said. ‘It’s me. What’s up?’

‘That was Mark Tipene in your kitchen last night, wasn’t it?’

‘It was.’

‘Mark Tipene! The All Black!’

‘Yep,’ I said. ‘Did you find him on the Weetbix box?’

But she was not to be diverted. ‘And just how, pray, do you know Mark Tipene?’

I sat down cross-legged on the bench in the lunch room. ‘I fell over his feet at a party a few weeks ago. His cousin’s share-milking just out of town, and he was down here visiting. And then he came in to work and asked me out.’

My stepmother was temporarily stricken dumb, but I heard the sounds of laboured breathing down the phone.

‘Em,’ I said gently, ‘you sound like a stalker.’

‘You’re seeing Mark Tipene,’ she repeated.

‘Um. Yes. I think so,’ I said, looking across the lunch room at his picture and smiling wonderingly to myself.

‘Sweetie, he’s gorgeous.’

‘I know.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“I don’t know why I’m wasting my breath,’ he said. ‘You’ve never listened to anything I’ve said in your life.’

‘I have too!’ I cried, stung.

‘When?’

I groped for an example and, luckily, found one. ‘I’ve never put my feet on the dashboard since you told me the airbag would ram my knees through my brain if I was in a crash.’

‘Huh,’ said Lance, sounding pleased. ‘Well, there you go.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“How exciting,’ I said, starting on a layer of cast padding.

‘Never a dull moment,’ Alison agreed. ‘I must say it makes a pleasant change to have the patient asleep when you’re putting on the cast. I had a little boy try to bite me last week.’

‘That’s why I prefer animals. If a dog does that you can jab it with a pole syringe full of ketamine through the bars of the cage. Have you got a finger spare to hold down another layer of bandage?’

‘Just as long as you don’t incorporate my hand into your cast,’ she said, trapping the end of the padding layer under her left little finger.

‘I’ll try not to.’

‘Thank you.’

I opened a packet of Scotchcast and dropped it into a jug of water. It’s such cool stuff – water activates the resin and it heats up and hardens in mere minutes. In fact, it usually hardens about thirty seconds before you really want it to, just to keep you on your toes.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“And then I met this really great girl on the weekend, and I wanted to see a bit more of her.’

‘I – I’m not that great,’ I stammered, and then gave myself a swift mental kick. There was just no need to take gaucheness to these new and previously unscaled heights. Or depths. ‘You know, it’s going to be really embarrassing if you were talking about someone else.’

‘I wasn’t,”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“He accepted the cake and bent his head to kiss me. ‘I’d better go home and let you get to bed.’

‘You could stay,’ I said impulsively. ‘If – if you want to . . .’

He looked at me, startled, and my cheeks burnt in shame. Hurriedly I added, ‘But you’ve probably got an early start or something.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I mean yes, I want to.’

‘Okay, um, cool,’ I said, going abruptly from hot with embarrassment to cold with terror as I realised that, in fact, this was all moving way too fast for me. I didn’t really want him to stay; I wanted him to kiss me goodnight and go away. Then I would be free to lie awake half the night, reliving every second of the evening, overanalysing his every word and agonising about how much he really liked me. The lying-awake-and-obsessing stage is an important one in any new relationship – you’re not supposed to just skip it.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“Hi, Joe,’ I said. ‘What’ve you got?’

‘How the hell would I know? That’s why you’re here. Come on.’ A greeting which, although hardly warm and welcoming, pleased me. It’s so disappointing to describe someone in graphic detail as being a total prat and then have them make a liar of you by being perfectly charming.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“Watching someone else calve a cow is a bit like watching them fumble with a knot; it leaves you twitching to elbow them aside and have a go yourself.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“Do you know what you’re doing?’

It would have been nice to reply with, ‘Well, I’ve never done an operation before, but I’ve seen heaps on Grey’s Anatomy and I’m really keen to give one a crack,’ but the only time I manage witty repartee is in the privacy of my own bedroom, when I’m imagining how the conversation might have gone if only I was brave. ‘Yes,’ I said gravely, drawing anaesthetic into a syringe. ‘I’ve done lots of caesareans. My last job was at a small-animal practice in England.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“I sank into a chair at a corner table and took deep slow breaths, as advised by the small rodent-like man who taught Beginner’s Yoga courses at the Broadview Community Centre. It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. It is better to remain silent . . . In yoga classes we were urged to use ‘I am a clear vessel filled with pure white light’ as our mantra, but I was adapting as the situation required.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“Exhausted by this burst of conversation, we relapsed into silence and gulped thankfully at our drinks in preparation for the next round. Some people, I am told, actually enjoy this first-date mutual appraisal disguised as casual conversation, but I think I’d rather go to a preschool ukulele concert. Or a Brazilian waxing appointment.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“What do you call a nurse with dirty knees?’

‘Huh?’ I asked, puzzled by this seemingly random question.

‘Head nurse,’ said Alison patiently.

‘Oh-h. That’s actually kind of funny.’

‘The first five times, perhaps”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast

“Her face lit up in welcome as she saw me, and taking prompt, if cowardly, action in the face of emergency I smiled, waved and ducked out through a side door.

As I hurried around the side of the building into a handy patch of deep shadow (Briar being a persistent sort of girl), I tripped over someone’s legs stretched across the path. I lurched forward, and a big hand grasped me firmly by the jersey and heaved me back upright.

‘Thank you,’ I said breathlessly.

‘Helen?’ Briar called, and I shrank back into the shadows beside the owner of the legs.

‘Avoiding someone?’ he asked.

‘Shh!’ I hissed, and he was obediently quiet. There was a short silence, happily unbroken by approaching footsteps, and I sighed with relief.

‘Not very sociable, are you?’

‘You can hardly talk,’ I pointed out.

‘True,’ he said.

‘Who are you hiding from?’

‘Everyone,’ he said morosely.

‘Fair enough. I’ll leave you to it.’

‘Better give it a minute,’ he advised. ‘She might still be lying in wait.’

That was a good point, and I leant back against the brick wall beside him. ‘You don’t have to talk to me,’ I said.

‘Thank you.’

There was another silence, but it felt friendly rather than uncomfortable. There’s nothing like lurking together in the shadows for giving you a sense of comradeship. I looked sideways at the stranger and discovered that he was about twice as big as any normal person. He was at least a foot taller than me, and built like a tank. But he had a nice voice, so with any luck he was a gentle giant rather than the sort who would tear you limb from limb as soon as look at you.

‘So,’ asked the giant, ‘why are you hiding from this girl?’

‘She’s the most boring person on the surface of the planet,’ I said.

‘That’s a big call. There’s some serious competition for that spot.’

‘I may be exaggerating. But she’d definitely make the top fifty. Why did you come to a party to skulk around a corner?’

‘I was dragged,’ he said. ‘Kicking and screaming.’ He turned his head to look at me, smiling.

‘Ah,’ I said wisely. ‘That’d be how you got the black eye.’ Even in the near-darkness it was a beauty – tight and shiny and purple. There was also a row of butterfly tapes holding together a split through his right eyebrow, and it occurred to me suddenly that chatting in dark corners to large unsociable strangers with black eyes probably wasn’t all that clever.

‘Nah,’ he said. ‘I collided with a big hairy Tongan knee.’

‘That was careless.’

‘It was, wasn’t it?’

I pushed myself off the wall to stand straight. ‘I’ll leave you in peace. Nice to meet you.’

‘You too,’ he said, and held out a hand. ‘I’m Mark.’

I took it and we shook solemnly. ‘Helen.’

‘What do you do when you’re not hiding from the most boring girl on the planet?’ he asked.

‘I’m a vet,’ I said. ‘What about you?’

‘I play rugby.’

‘Oh!’ That was a nice, legitimate reason for running into a Tongan knee – I had assumed it was the type of injury sustained during a pub fight.”
― Danielle Hawkins, Chocolate Cake for Breakfast