The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“Time is a treacherous mistress. In our youth it flows slow and deep; the days stretch out endlessly. When we are children, a summer lasts for a century. As we age, the flow of time speeds up. Suddenly, a year vanishes with the snap of one’s fingers. How quickly time eludes us, how easily it tricks us.” ~ Silvia Moreno-Garcia, The Bewitching

Love is a light you can see only when you reach for it. You hold it in your hand and, for as long as the flame glows, it warms you. ~ Caroline Lea, Love, Sex, and Frankenstein

I tug on her hand, trying to pull her up. “I want your tits in my mouth.” “And I want your dick in mine,” she replies with an evil smirk.” ~ Meghan Quinn, Merry Christmas, You Filthy Animal

“What a gift that is. To still wish and dream and want. To find the good. To wear it on your sleeve.” ~ B.K. Borison, Good Spirits

“Every day we should feel, I hope, a little grace. And we can use it to bring peace in everything we do, to reconcile and bear quiet witness to our common humanity. Sorry. I don’t really have anything special to say...” “Actually,” said their mother, “that was perfect.” ~ Jenny Colgan, The Christmas Bookshop

“If we get to the point where we don’t help each other anymore, that’s when we stop being human.” ~ Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl

“I deserve you least of all. But I want you the most. And I won’t give up.” ~ Ali Hazelwood, Cruel Winter with You

“Love is a funny thing... It’s not always big or loud or over the top. Most of the time, it’s quiet and unassuming. It’s a shared cup of coffee on a rainy day or reading side by side together every night. It’s finding the person who gets you. The person who will have your back through it all... Your person.” ~ Laurie Gilmore, The Gingerbread Bakery

Oh, how faint grows the heart of man when he plucks it—still beating—from his chest and lays it at the foot of a woman. ~ Ariel Lawhon, The Frozen River

“What I am is the Indian who can’t die. I’m the worst dream America ever had.” ~ Stephen Graham Jones, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

“I could spend an eternity studying you and still not know what you might do next. You give so much of yourself, so freely. You’re . . . wild with your attentions. Miraculous. I’ve seen so many lives, Harriet, but I’ve never seen someone live like you.” ~ B.K. Borison, Good Spirits

“You’ve got that look about you.” “What look?” “Well, not to be rude, but you’re all fucked up, aren’t you?” ~ R.F. Kuang, Katabasis

Girls—normal human girls—people could contend with; they were weak and small. And dogs too could be trained. But girls who became dogs, or who let the world believe they were dogs, were either powerful or mad: both monstrous possibilities. ~ Xenobe Purvis, The Hounding

It is a hallmark of failing societies, I’ve learned, this requirement that one always be in possession of a valid reason to exist. ~ Omar El Akkad, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“And why didn’t you just knock on the door and introduce yourself like a normal human being? Say, Hey, I’m your next-door neighbor ? Instead, you chose to part my bush with your crowbar.” He smirks a stupid smirk. “Part your bush with my crowbar, huh?” ~ Meghan Quinn, Merry Christmas, You Filthy Animal

“I have found it to be absolutely astounding, all the trouble living has turned out to be. Things nobody ever warned me about. “I wish someone would have thought to say to me, earlier on, ‘Sybil, over and over again serpents will emerge from the bottom of the sea and grab you by the feet.’ Of course I didn’t say anything of the sort to my own children, and I probably never would.” ~ Virginia Evans, The Correspondent: A Novel

“What’s different now from 1804 or 1904 is that tuberculosis is curable, and has been since the mid-1950s. We know how to live in a world without tuberculosis. But we choose not to live in that world.” ~ John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis

“And remember,” the voice said, “what is laughter but a moment of release where pain and memory are washed away? When we laugh, we are stronger. When we laugh, we heal the world.” ~ Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark

To borrow a human expression: fuck. Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck. And also, fuck that pea-brained software developer to Hell. ~ Barbara Truelove, Of Monsters and Mainframes

Each day, I was building a life of my choosing, and it was a good life. I knew what was missing, but I was also appreciative of what was there. ...The new land had chosen to keep me, and I responded with every bit of determination and care that this honor deserved. ~ Shelley Read, Go as a River

“2010! To have been alive then in those resourceful raucous times, when the sea stood off at a respectful distance, when you could walk in any direction as far as you liked and keep your feet dry.” ~ Ian McEwan, What We Can Know

“Their system isn’t for us,” her mother said. “We were left out of their calculations from the start.” “The PMs are supposed to promote human flourishing.” “The question is who gets to be a human. That has always been the question.” ~ Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

“You hold on to her. But who could hold on to the wind? And—better yet—who would be so foolish as to trust—to love—such a wild being?” ~ Rebecca Ross, Wild Reverence

“But I’m starting to think Thoreau might have been full of shit. If we aren’t living for others, maybe we aren’t really living.” ~ Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“So long as you can hear the waters, everything seems possible: that the sun is the moon, that a star is a cloud, that dusk is dawn, and everything is both hallowed and haunted at the same time.” ~ Amal El-Mohtar, The River Has Roots

I’ve read history. Things weren’t always this way. They don’t have to go on being this way. What we have broken we can mend. ~ Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

If he was the sun, by the old gods, she was the moon. Powerful, dark, and overbearing at times. She never left him, nor he her, as if they danced around each other for eternity. ~ Amber V. Nicole, The Dawn of the Cursed Queen

“...something about you had to mellow with age, given that your temperament wouldn’t budge an inch. It was left to your eyes to soften, and they are lovelier now than ever. So no, Mrs. Ballard, you might not be pretty, but I’ll be damned if you are not the most beautiful woman I have ever seen.” ~ Ariel Lawhon, The Frozen River

“ The things that we love tell us what we are. If I ever get a tattoo, it’s going to be that, right across the top of my chest.” ~ Patrick Ryan, Buckeye

“Do you know why this world is as bad as it is?…It is because people think only about their own business, and won’t trouble themselves to stand up for the oppressed, nor bring the wrong-doers to light…. My doctrine is this, that if we see cruelty or wrong that we have the power to stop, and do nothing, we make ourselves sharers in the guilt.” ~ Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

“Whenever i got close to him, the rational part of my brain fucked off to the moon.” ~ Navessa Allen, Caught Up

Admiring the sky served no evolutionary purpose whatsoever; in the Pliocene epoch, it might even have been dangerous. So who was it that first stopped in their tracks at the sight of a sunrise? Thought, Holy crap, that’s a beautiful thing? ~ Eric Puchner, Dream State

“Lies could be told with such liberating ease — they tasted better on the tongue than hard facts.” ~ Xenobe Purvis, The Hounding

Strength, I had learned, was like this littered forest floor, built of small triumphs and infinite blunders, sunny hours followed by sudden storms that tore it all down. We are one and all alike if for no other reason than the excruciating and beautiful way we grow piece by unpredictable piece, falling, pushing from the debris, rising again, and hoping for the best. ~ Shelley Read, Go as a River

“I would throw away my pack, my life, and my entire world for you. Which is the exact reason I cannot have you.” ~ Ali Hazelwood, Mate

“...all we have is the story we tell. Everything we do, every decision we make, our strength, weakness, motivation, history, and character — what we believe — none of it is real; it’s all part of the story we tell. But here’s the thing: it’s our goddamned story!” ~ Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins

“I didn’t know it was happiness at the time, because it felt like busyness and exhaustion and financial stress and self doubt.” ~ Virginia Evans, The Correspondent: A Novel

The only thing surprising about any of this is that he’s alive to see it. That’s the real bet they all made, isn’t it? It will come. But not until we’re gone. ~ Lily Brooks-Dalton, The Light Pirate

He’d loved her, even though he never expected them to be anything but doomed. He’d loved her all the same. ~ SenLinYu, Alchemised

It seemed ridiculous, but perhaps these books, sheaves of paper made from trees that had once grown on their home planet, full of made-up stories, were what kept Thebes so much more grounded than the rest of them. ~ Lily Brooks-Dalton, Good Morning, Midnight

“I prefer teaching [about] the post-2015 period, when social media were beginning to be drawn into the currency of private lives, when waves of fantastical or malevolent or silly rumours began to shape the nature not only of politics but of human understanding. Fascinating! It was as if credulous medieval masses had burst through into modernity, rushing into the wrong theatre and onto the wrong stage set.” ~ Ian McEwan, What We Can Know

“...you are one of the good people. I hope whatever you choose to do with all that I leave you, you do it for the other good people in the world. The poets and the musicians and the book readers. The kind ones and the carers, the people who pursue the happiness of others over the accumulation of wealth and power. Do it for them and make the world a little bit better.” ~ Gareth Brown, The Society of Unknowable Objects

“Her servers are in pieces.” “Pieces can be put back together.” “She’s dead.” Frankenstein smiles a slow smile. “Dead things coming back to life is my whole brand, Doctor.” They stride toward the door. “I’ll tell her you love her. Enjoy your new arms.” ~ Barbara Truelove, Of Monsters and Mainframes

My dad always said a person needs three things to be happy: something to do; someone to love; and something to look forward to.” ~ Annie Hartnett, The Road to Tender Hearts

“...art is a fragile magic, just like love, and that’s humanity’s only defense against death. That we create and paint and dance and fall in love, that’s our rebellion against eternity. Everything beautiful is a shield.” ~ Fredrik Backman, My Friends

This is it. This is what a life is. A journey with no signposts. The seas roll out in every direction. ~ Amity Gaige, Sea Wife

“A thousand plus worlds he has seen, yet when he dreams, he dreams of you.” ~ Amber V. Nicole, The Throne of Broken Gods

...a person is not beautiful because they’re good, they’re beautiful because they’re alive, like a child. Alive and curious and restless. Never mind good. They’re beautiful because there’s a light in their eyes. Sometimes destructive, sometimes hurtful, sometimes selfish, but beautiful because alive. And progress is like that, by its nature alive. ~ Samantha Harvey, Orbital

How these insane things kept happening, these eruptions of senseless violence, of anger and ignorance and greed and mendacity, like ancient fissures bubbling up under the surface, and what — we were just supposed to go on with our lives? Wake up the next day like nothing happened, like we hadn’t lost our minds? Just turn the page, to the baseball scores or the horoscopes or celebrity birthdays? ~ Jess Walter, So Far Gone

“It was, she supposed, a way of defying death. Necessities helped people survive, but joyful excess gave them life.” ~ Annalee Newitz, Automatic Noodle