Samantha Tonge > Quotes

“What a precious gift I'd been given, to no longer have that constant internal narrative wondering if I fitted in - a narrative that I'd done my very best to hide, all these years. It made me feel somehow taller. Stronger. Proud of myself. More honest. I mean, what a waste of a life to spend it lying to everyone - and worst of all, to yourself.”
― Samantha Tonge, The New Beginnings Coffee Club

“I guess all anyone wants is to be loved for their true self. And to find the strength to ignore the inner soundtrack that tells us to pretend to be something we aren't, otherwise we'll be on our own.”
― Samantha Tonge, The New Beginnings Coffee Club

“I am a down-to-earth gentleman who will never, under any circumstances, resemble some sort of romantic hero like Mr Darcy. ”
― Samantha Tonge, Doubting Abbey

“I alone had the power to change my life. All I had to do was be brave enough to try.”
― Samantha Tonge, The New Beginnings Coffee Club

“Abbey was born to sophistication, whereas I was more Barbara than Buckingham Palace Windsor.”
― Samantha Tonge, Doubting Abbey

“But promise me something, when you meet a young man… Don’t sing his song, because when you split up, you’ll have lost your voice. Harmonies are the way to go, blending together individual pitches, different tones, to form something rather beautiful where each part retains its own character.”
― Samantha Tonge, A Single Act of Kindness

“Never forget that the most important friendship is the one you have with yourself. A good friend is kind, patient, respectful, and if the voice in your head is not those things then you need to ignore it”
― Samantha Tonge, When We Were Friends

“visiting. And like I’ve said”
― Samantha Tonge, The Winter We Met

“..the past belongs to nostalgia or regret, the future to hopes or fears.... whereas the present belongs to nothing but opportunity, if you've the gumption to.”
― Samantha Tonge, Lost Luggage

“then”
― Samantha Tonge, The New Beginnings Coffee Club

“What’s important is tolerance, kindness, living your truth and finding beauty in simplicity, and embracing change. There’s always joy to be found if you search hard enough.”
― Samantha Tonge, The Memory of You

“Control isn’t love, it’s a form of management. Of governing. Of ruling over. Of no equality. It is everything a relationship shouldn’t be.”
― Samantha Tonge, When We Were Friends

“sipped her coffee. ‘What’s he like?’ ‘Good with customers. He likes reading, too,”
― Samantha Tonge, The Memory of You

“Alex’s espresso; her name badge said… ‘Reenie’. Alex took a sip. Not bad. Slowly, Reenie came back carrying a red plate, as if the food were a highly important telegram. She lowered it onto the yellow tablecloth and Alex wrinkled her nose with a sense of nausea that she’d suffered from lately. On the plate lay a perfect circle of egg and neat runways of bacon. ‘I ordered fruit and porridge, not a cardiac arrest,’ Alex said in an abrupt tone. The parrot squawked again. ‘He’s very friendly,’ called barn owl man’s voice from across the room. ‘Never nipped anyone.’ Alex got to her feet and glowered at the cage, the staff and the manager too. ‘Why is bad service a joke here?’ she asked. ‘You do know what this café is called?’ asked Tom. Oh. As it turned out she didn’t. Alex had always cut Hope short when she’d tried to give any details, and had simply focused on the directions to get to the building. Then she’d been distracted by her phone outside, just as she was going to read its name. He picked up the menu and passed it over. Alex read the front. By now the whole room had fallen silent. Contact lenses gave her perfect vision and it wasn’t April Fool’s Day, so what sort of idiot would call their business Wrong Order Café? ‘A café that purposely delivers the wrong orders? Next, in this parallel universe, you’ll be telling me that the”
― Samantha Tonge, The Memory of You

“Just be true to yourself. Listen to your heart. The rest will follow. Everyone has problems. You aren't alone.”
― Samantha Tonge, The New Beginnings Coffee Club

“scared. Like the doorman where she lived still not admitting to anyone else he was gay. Like the aunt who was conducting a secret pen friend affair with a lifer in prison. Mum used to say Alex had been born with the face of someone who’d signed a confidentiality agreement. Secrets were often seen as dark and deceptive, but sometimes they were simply sad truths that people tried to hide. Perhaps that had been the problem with her third book – readers had worked out that, secretly, her heart wasn’t in it. Her husband’s cheating was one factor that had pushed her to become an author, to forge an independent, successful existence. During the first year or two that followed, the series of her young lovers, a binge of light-hearted romance, had translated into two huge best-sellers, leaving readers clamouring for more of her heart-breaking heroes and arousing paragraphs. Trouble was, that binge eventually left Alex so sated that by the time she came to write the third novel, simply the word ‘romance’ turned her stomach. ‘Mum had been Dad’s life for so long, the two of them were each other’s school sweetheart, so the coffee shop became his life instead,’ Tom continued. ‘My mates loved this place. We’d pile in after school for Coke floats and they’d pester their parents to visit at the weekend. Slowly, by word of mouth, its fried breakfasts gained a reputation. Benedict Cumberbatch came in once when he studied drama at the university. We even served the”
― Samantha Tonge, The Memory of You