The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“Love is such a dangerous and powerful emotion. The gods curse it, for it has power. Empires have fallen for it, reduced to sand and scriptures. Worlds have burned for it, and they will once more. Love has the power to touch even the untouchable. Use it.” ~ Amber V. Nicole, The Throne of Broken Gods

Do not wait for people to be flawless before you allow yourself to adore them. Adore them anyway. ~ Katherine Rundell, Impossible Creatures

Time. But Navajos didn’t hurry. In fact, there was no word in the Navajo language for time. ~ Tony Hillerman, The Blessing Way

“This is not planet Earth as we found it. This is a new place — a fire planet we have made, with an atmosphere more conducive to combustion than at any time in the past 3 million years.” ~ John Vaillant, Fire Weather: On the Front Lines of a Burning World

Cultural shock was nothing much compared to the biological shock I suffered as a human male among human beings who were, five-sixths of the time, hermaphroditic neuters. ~ Ursula K LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“It’s never easy to realize that the people who are supposed to protect us are the ones who can create the deepest scars.” ~ Kaylie Smith, Enchantra

You need a story about your own life, or the bad stuff in your head writes the story for you. He got it. He did. Why his mother had told a different story from the one she’d been given. She had made her story better. ~ Annie Hartnett, The Road to Tender Hearts

“Daughter, student, whore — they change you into whatever they need you to be. Choose for yourself. For once in your life.” ~ Grady Hendrix, Witchcraft for Wayward Girls

“Gird your loins and hoist your bras, ladies. We’re digging in.” ~ Meghan Quinn, Till Summer Do Us Part

“This is a love story and it is better, by far, than any of the ones I have dreamed up in the past. If I’m allowed a wish, just one, then it is this: I wish for our story to have a happy ending.” ~ Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

“Yeah, well, what’s the point of sailing free, choosing your own horizon, if you won’t choose what’s right over what’s easy?” ~ Sarah Beth Durst, The Enchanted Greenhouse

I would be Medusa, if it came to it, I resolved. If the gods held me accountable one day for the sins of someone else, if they came for me to punish a man’s actions, I would not hide away like Pasiphae. I would wear that coronet of snakes, and the world would shrink from me instead. ~ Jennifer Saint, Ariadne

“To improve the efficacy of our relationship, I think we should collectively move these issues into the recycling bin.” ~ Barbara Truelove, Of Monsters and Mainframes

That’s what I got from these books, the ability to walk through the door where everything I thought had been lost was in fact waiting for me. All of it. The trick was being brave enough to look. The books had given me that bravery, which is another way of saying the ability to believe. ~ Ann Patchett, These Precious Days

I myself was now an island. Solitary. Brambles and five-petalled flowers were my garden. Rocks my furniture. Ocean waves my lessons. Sadness overwhelmed me and sank back. Then, like the tide, joy crept in on me again. ~ Allegra Goodman, Isola

If everything was better now, why did it feel as if nothing had changed — as if the system that existed before rationalization hadn’t gone away? As if, instead, it had been cemented into place? Made more comfortable for the people at the bottom — but also made permanent, so that they would always be at the bottom? ~ Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

“Fuck me,” I muttered. “Kind of a weird time to offer,” Aly said without missing a beat. “Can I take a raincheck until after we’ve disposed of the body and you get a chance to brush your teeth?” ~ Navessa Allen, Lights Out