Summer at the Comfort Food Café Quotes

“Busy is good. Busy is useful. Busy is a distraction. Busy gives you a brilliant excuse to avoid things you want to avoid and concentrate instead on the things that allow your brain to stay inside your head, rather than causing it to dribble out of your ears. So, I’ve been busy. Mostly very”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“Teenagers, I sometimes forget, can be very serious. Life seems to get sillier as you get older and you realise how little point there is in trying to control anything”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“It’s the little stuff. The goodnight cuddles rather than the spectacular sex. The quick chat over a rushed breakfast rather than the romantic three-course meals in a posh restaurant. The casual contact, the taken-for-granted communication, the fact that if you hear a noise in the night, there’s someone else to send to investigate.”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“After a while, those little things – the outward signs of a life being half-lived, of a life in flux – started to fade. I got used to the driving. I accepted that his clothes were gone. I stopped bursting into tears every time I smelled Old Spice. But I never, ever, let go of that dressing gown. I suspect it’s a sign of some kind of mental breakdown, so I keep it secret, tucked away in a Tesco carrier bag in my underwear drawer, only getting it out at night.”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“most cafés. A limited range of pasta salads, jacket spuds,”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“Life seems to get sillier as you get older and you realise how little point there is in trying to control anything”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“Right. I have pancakes. And I have Nutella. Who thinks that’s a good idea?”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“But David did have the very big advantage of Lizzie adoring everything about him. He could never do any wrong in her eyes”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“fortnight,”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“the smile. That small, sweet smile that says ‘I remain unimpressed, but love you anyway’. The uni-dimple makes a brief, heart-wrenching appearance, before he turns his face back to what really matters. The”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“he’s also a boy, so he lives in hope that he’s about to be whisked”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“suspect they go along the lines of ‘will someone please tell me I’m adopted?’, and at worst, she may be using her birthday money to hire a hitman. To say she’s displeased at being separated from her friends for the summer is something of an understatement – a bit like saying Daniel Craig is passably attractive. ‘It’s on the Jurassic Coast,’ I add,”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“He’d joined our school a few years in and appeared like a space alien at the start of term one in September. He was”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“I can’t give you a romantic story about how we met at a wedding or got set up on a blind date by friends, or how our eyes met across a crowded nightclub – mainly because our eyes actually met across a crowded playground”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“I scrabble for something more contemporary – something cooler. Something that might make her hate me ever-so-slightly less than she does right now. Something along the lines of ‘the lead singer from Green”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“I’m writing to you about the job you advertised for a cook at the Comfort Food Café”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“No thanks, Mum,’ says Nate, turning his eyes back to the view of the bay. ‘Cake doesn’t solve everything,’ says Lizzie, finally putting her phone down and leaning back in her chair. She looks at me through narrowed”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“may well get hurt in ways that I’m not yet equipped to handle.”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“Inside, though, the picture is a little more fuzzy. I do feel strong, in some ways, but the way I reacted to Jimbo’s passing and to waking up in Matt’s arms have made me suspect that at least some of that strength still lives in a house built”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“It wasn’t enough for him to keep the pictures online, he got them all printed out and each album had the year it related to and the place we’d visited written on the spine on a sticker. They’re all there now, on the bookshelf in the living room. Lined up in order – a photographic journey through time and space. Lizzie”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“WWDD”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“packet of Rennies.”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café

“When they’re taller than you, you still feel just as protective, but the reality is that they will go out into the world on their own and the world will very likely hurt them. To”
― Debbie Johnson, Summer at the Comfort Food Café