The Saucy Wenches Book Club

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