The Saucy Wenches Book Club

I’ve heard it said that the sorrow of human life is that it ends. But I don’t think that’s the source of our sorrow. Everything ends, not just human lives. Days end. Species disappear. Planets die. No, the real sorrow of human life is that we feel. That’s our affliction. ~ Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“But to love Frances was to be always saying goodbye to the girl Frances used to be and falling in love again with the girl Frances was becoming.” ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid, Atmosphere

Gurathin turned to me. “So you don’t have a governor module, but we could punish you by looking at you.” I looked at him. “Probably, right up until I remember I have guns built into my arms.” ~ Martha Wells, All Systems Red ( The Murderbot Diaries #1)

“I love how quickly you read books and how absorbed you get in a good story. I love watching you lie on the sofa reading one from cover-to-cover. It’s like I’m in the room with you but you’re in a whole other galaxy” ~ Dolly Alderton, Good Material

“That’s all of life. All we can hope for. You mustn’t think about the fact that it might end, because then you live like a coward, you never love too much or sing too loudly. You have to take it for granted, the artist thinks, the whole thing: sunrises and slow Sunday mornings and water balloons and another person’s breath against your neck. That’s the only courageous thing a person can do.” ~ Fredrik Backman, My Friends

If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of those two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

All cats have an ancient knowledge; it’s dogs that are born with a blissfully clean slate. ~ Annie Hartnett, The Road to Tender Hearts

Action and argument together form an experiment, and nothing but constant experimentation will get us where we need to be. The system that contains us is not threatened by what we think of it. It is threatened by what we do about it. And the time for doing is always now. ~ Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

“Those who know their faults are truly wise,” the Queen said. “And those who have endured the worst have most to teach. Do not say, then, that your story does not deserve retelling. Tell me, rather, how I might reward you for offering what you have learned.” ~ Allegra Goodman, Isola

“Humanity is awful, angry, and violent. But we are also magical and musical. We dance. We sing. We create. We live and laugh and rage and cry and despair and hope. We are a bundle of contradictions without rhyme or reason. And there is no one like us in all the universe.” ~ T.J. Klune, In the Lives of Puppets

Victor is a whole bucket of crazy in that velvet catsuit, but in the end, she has rules and she follows them all the way down into the mud. ~ Nick Harkaway, Titanium Noir

“So don’t feed the nightmares. Don’t let yourself panic. Don’t give the Capitol that. They’ve taken enough already.” ~ Suzanne Collins, Sunrise on the Reaping

“I tell myself not to count the years ahead in which she might never again come, but rather cherish the days she has given me of her own free will, when she lowered her species’ instinctive guard against humans, and shared the beauty and mystery of her presence in silent and graceful companionship. I will remember her leaving, but I will always know that before she did, she always, first, looked back.” ~ Chloe Dalton, Raising Hare

Listen, no one hikes two thousand miles because they’re happy. Even the most cheerful or uncomplaining hikers aren’t “happy.” You’ve got to have a significant fire under you to slog through over two thousand miles of jagged rocks, rain, and snakes. You’ve got to have a deep, unshakable point to prove. Everybody’s got a reason to hike the trail. It’s never because they are well loved and at peace. What was mine? Well, I suppose it was to heal. ~ Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“I wish to be the mother you are to me,” she said so softly Mabel doubted her own ears. But those were the words she spoke, and Mabel took them into her heart and held them there forever. ~ Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child

“Love isn’t something you can cup in your hands, and I have to believe that means it’s something that can’t ever be lost.” ~ Emily Henry, Great Big Beautiful Life

“When you have so many other people doing things for you professionally and personally, you stop taking responsibility for any of it.” ~ Sarah Wynn-Williams, Careless People

“People’s capacity for turning dogmatic stupidity into political movements never ceased to amaze me. We’ve knocked off 99.9% of the human race and somehow the crazies still manage to survive. It just defies the odds.” ~ Dennis E. Taylor, We Are Legion (We Are Bob)

Life is too short to miss the lightning strike and too long to live it alone. ~ Rebecca Yarros, The Things We Leave Unfinished

“When you have everything, the only luxury left is taking things away from others.” ~ Kirsten Miller, Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books

“We made too much comedy of our differences and placed too much meaning on our similarities.” ~ Dolly Alderton, Good Material

Up here, nice feels such an alien word. It’s brutal, inhuman, overwhelming, lonely, extraordinary and magnificent. There isn’t one single thing that is nice. ~ Samantha Harvey, Orbital

“I have learned there is one thing a person never tires of, no matter how long they live. And that is being in love. All else is ash and ember.” ~ Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales

“We are never at the finish line of understanding. There is always something about life and the universe that we are still to discover” ~ Matt Haig, The Life Impossible

You have risen from the ashes before, the flowers said in a voice I remembered, a voice I both cherished and feared. And then I climbed, and I was there, curling up tight. The only way to survive is to believe you always will. ~ Samantha Shannon, The Dark Mirror

Did you think in a place where the moon looms so large, there wouldn’t be frogs to praise it? ~ Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

He did not fear my darkness, nor pity my compassion. And the truth was, the idea of dying without knowing him completely was torturous. ~ Carissa Broadbent, The Serpent & the Wings of Night

Romance wasn’t in chocolate, it was in the gasp of breath as we came up for air. It was in the way he cradled my face, the way I traced my finger over the crescent-shaped birthmark on his collarbone. It was in the way he uttered how beautiful I was, the way it made my heart soar. It was in the way I wanted to know everything about him — his favorite songs, finally guess his favorite color. ~ Ashley Poston, The Seven Year Slip

“We are allowed to do that, are we not Mabel? To invent our own endings and choose joy over sorrow?” ~ Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery. ~ Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

“Nobody will ever fuck you the way I’m about to fuck you, Saeris Fane. I’m about to introduce you to all seven gods. When you meet them, don’t forget to tell them I’m the one you worship on your knees.” ~ Callie Hart, Quicksilver

“Gather as much knowledge as you can, because information is power. And choosing how to use it is freedom. The more you know, the freer you will be.” ~ Kirsten Miller, Lula Dean’s Little Library of Banned Books

“Here’s an idea: All emotions start out as love. Later, that love is worked on by the forces of luck and suffering. Hate is just soured love. Fear is wounded love. Longing is homeless love. Love, not pain, is the mother. Love is the taproot.” ~ Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“All of the hormones that made me want to seem approachable so I could breed are gone and replaced by hormones that are fiercely protective of my autonomy and freedom” ~ Miranda July, All Fours

“If it is a metaphor, then what is it a metaphor of?” she asked. “I believe it is of the persistence of the miraculous in our lives,” Bardfield-Saling said. “The moon turning to cheese is a miracle, is it not?” ~ John Scalzi, When the Moon Hits Your Eye

“Leave those dishes,” I should have said. “Come play with me in the forest,” I should have said. “The world will end tomorrow.” ~ Emma Pattee, Tilt

“Maybe we’ll drown or burn or starve one day, but until then we get to choose if we’ll add to that destruction or if we will care for each other.” ~ Charlotte McConaghy, Wild Dark Shore

“I refuse to ‘look up.’ Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man’s fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.” “I ain’t miserable.” “You are.” “No, I ain’t.” “Yes, you are.” ~ John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

“No, he’s made a very good point,” said Bashford provocatively. “Women are just vessels, you know.” “That’s very true,” said Sykes, smiling angelically at him. “I myself am a seventeen-thousand-ton Dreadnought class battleship with enough firepower to destroy a medium-sized city.” ~ Jodi Taylor, An Argumentation of Historians

The octopuses do not produce representational art of living things, for to live is to change and be in constant motion. ... They create abstract sculpture..., they make poetry with their skins, they dance through strange, boneless ballets in the water. To the octopuses this is not distinct from living. ~ Adrian Tchaikovsky, Children of Ruin

“Don’t choose a mediocre life for a mediocre man. Go be exceptional. If he’s worth it, he won’t judge you. And if he’s really the one, he’ll come along for the ride.” ~ Penn Cole, Spark of the Everflame

“Celie, baby, you look around at people who are happy in themselves in their lives — they’re just busy living, having a good time. They don’t set out to be mean to other people. Their energy is going into other things. It doesn’t even occur to them to hurt someone else, or to try to make them feel small. In fact, they’re more likely to be building other people up.” ~ Jojo Moyes, We All Live Here

When a dog chooses to love a human, it is a timeless affair of the soul and spirit, a meeting far beyond the mortal body. An eternal entanglement is this mingling of the souls. A loyalty beyond language and all of life’s earthly matter. ~ Kira Jane Buxton, Tartufo

“Listen. I need you to tell people this; I need you, when you get back, to tell them: the brutality is terrible. And yes: the chaos is very great. But tell them: greater than the world’s chaos are its miracles.” ~ Katherine Rundell, Impossible Creatures

Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need. ~ Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

We must become a spiritual partner of science, using our vast experience—millennia of philosophy, personal inquiry, meditation, soul-searching—to help humanity build a moral framework and ensure that the coming technologies will unify, illuminate, and raise us up ... rather than destroy us. ~ Dan Brown, Origin

Human beings, Adina faxes, did not think their lives were challenging enough so they invented roller coasters. A roller coaster is a series of problems on a steel track. Upon encountering real problems, human beings compare their lives to riding a roller coaster, even though they invented roller coasters to be fun things to do on their days off. ~ Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

They would think she was savoring the taste (blueberries, cinnamon, cream — excellent), but she was actually savoring the whole morning, trying to catch it, pin it down, keep it safe before all those precious moments became yet another memory. ~ Liane Moriarty, What Alice Forgot

“It’s hard.” “What is?” “Being alive.” “It is,” Arthur agreed. “But perhaps that’s the point: the trials and tribulations of life weigh heavily upon us, but we find people to help lighten the load.” ~ T.J. Klune, Somewhere Beyond the Sea

The ships saved a million lives, but when the tycoon died his heirs reconsidered this legacy. They formed a partnership with a shrewd pharmaceutical astronaut and began developing therapies they identified as “crucial to an orderly future.” ~ Leif Enger, I Cheerfully Refuse