The Saucy Wenches Book Club

All libraries contained magic. Even libraries that didn’t specialize in such things. Because what was a book, if not a portal into another realm, another time, another life even. ~ Callie Hart, Brimstone

Everything alive is sentient. To accept this feels not at all like a humiliation of our species, but it is a humbling of sorts. And a precious gift—the kinship of all these sentient others an antidote to our loneliness. ~ Michael Pollan, A World Appears: A Journey into Consciousness

... A feeling that something is coming, waiting to be born, out of this time. Almost physical, like before a period, or a pregnancy, or vomiting. Something is getting ready to resolve itself. ~ Charlotte Wood, Stone Yard Devotional

And yes, I will go into the year as you said: boldly, unapologetically, head up and not taking bullshit from anyone with a penis. ~ Virginia Evans, The Correspondent: A Novel

And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves. ~ Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

Some tendency suppressed and kept within decent bounds in my time had been unleashed and any shame about it so intensely rationalized that it no longer occurred to anyone that the swollen ugliness everywhere was a direct result of the heedless indulgence of some pervasive acquisitive hunger. If I might say it that way. Greed , greed, one could taste it in the air. ~ George Saunders, Vigil

“None of this happened, Paul,” she says. “You and I never existed. There is no Antimemetics Division.” ~ qntm, Sam Hughes, There Is No Antimemetics Division

“ Heart eyes. Hayden said I look at you with heart eyes.” Shane squirmed against his bedsheets. “When did he say that?” “At camp. I was staring at you and he said—” “Oh god.” Shane palmed his face. “He did not say that.” “Yes. Was probably true. I look at you and I am just...” Ilya opened and closed his fist several times in front of his chest. “My heart goes crazy” ~ Rachel Reid, The Long Game

“You know how you can remember exactly when and where you read certain books? A great novel, a truly great one, not only captures a particular fictional experience, it alters and intensifies the way you experience your own life while you’re reading it. And it preserves it, like a time capsule.” ~ Lily King, Heart the Lover

To watch things fall into place for me might have caused resentment in other fathers. Not James Crowe. Success, he explained in an interview I discovered years later ... was defined by something he learned from his own dad. Did you bring joy to your community? Did you put something back into the world? ~ Cameron Crowe, The Uncool

“The snail may leave a trail of slime behind him, but a little slime will do a man no harm, while if you dance with dragons, you must expect to burn.” ~ George R.R. Martin, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms

“Oh my god, Carl. It’s porn. This is unauthorized derriere porn! The Donut Holes are an unauthorized fan group, and now they have merch! Merch that exploits my backside! Carl, do something!” “Donut,” I said. “It’s enchanted. He’s wearing it because it helps him. You can’t even see it.” “How would you like it if someone was wearing a shirt featuring your butthole, Carl?” “I don’t stick my butthole in everybody’s face when they’re trying to sit down and eat.” “Well, excuse me for showing affection. I mean really.” ~ Matt Dinniman, This Inevitable Ruin ( Dungeon Crawler Carl #7)

“No life is ordinary. No life is without hope, without light, even during the unimaginable.” ~ Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

“Women have been each other’s sword and shield since the beginning. When men turn against us, we turn to one another.” ~ Stacia Stark, We Who Will Die

Humans are the only species who subvert truth for their own entertainment. ~ Shelby Van Pelt, Remarkably Bright Creatures

“Every part. I love all of you.” He blew a dark curl out of his eyes. “I’d spend the fortunes of the universe to protect you. I’d drain the seas dry. Fell every tree. I would sacrifice the sun from the fucking sky and surrender the stars, too, if I could. But those things aren’t mine to give. All I have is my life. It isn’t much, but I’d spend it and consider the price small if it meant keeping you safe.” ~ Callie Hart, Brimstone

This was the real sacrifice: giving up your own joy, the thing you maybe loved to do more than anything else on earth, so that your kid might experience it someday too. Might feel a bit of this joy himself. ~ Eric Puchner, Dream State

He stands before the fire, warming his rump. It is winter after all, and none of us are ever truly warm unless butted up to an open flame. ~ Ariel Lawhon, The Frozen River

“After you’ve cheated someone, you have no option but to turn that person into an ogre so as to justify your own misdeeds.” ~ Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

“And in case you didn’t get the memo, I think the shit hit the fan and it’s all over the goddamn ceiling.” ~ Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark

“...maybe, at the end of the day, it’s not ... only about forgiveness. It’s about something deeper than that. Deeper than any limited understanding of being angry or hurt or deceived. Deeper than any understanding we may have of what we’ve gotten right and wrong. It’s about our effort. The effort is the thing, isn’t it? What effort will you make to be forgiven? What effort will you keep making, regardless of the cost, to show up for the people who need you?” ~ Laura Dave, The First Time I Saw Him

Nothing is what it’s supposed to be if love is not at the core. ~ Allen Levi, Theo of Golden: A Novel

They were warned about what would happen with repeated exposure to this seamless earth. You will see, they were told, its fullness, its absence of borders except those between land and sea. You’ll see no countries, just a rolling indivisible globe which knows no possibility of separation, let alone war. And you’ll feel yourself pulled in two directions at once. Exhilaration, anxiety, rapture, depression, tenderness, anger, hope, despair. ~ Samantha Harvey, Orbital

“Let us lie here forever. Let us be buried as wild things are, by tooth and claw and worm. Let the grasses grow up through the sockets of our eyes. Let them find us in seven years or seventy, and let their brows furrow, because they cannot tell my bones from yours.” ~ Alix E. Harrow, The Everlasting

“I’m not a delicate flower that you should fear crushing in your palm.” “No, you’re delicate like a bomb.” ~ K.A. Linde, The Wren in the Holly Library

The regimes had learned, from watching how other autocratic systems were toppled, that compromise was death. They made no reforms. They promised nothing. They simply jailed, beat, harassed, and killed as many people as was necessary. ~ Ray Nayler, Where the Axe Is Buried

“I am here to do a job that never gets any easier. I’m here to stand up to those who have hurt me. I am here to reclaim my life.” ~ Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

It might be true when they say, “choose your lover wisely since you’ll become a reflection of each other.” ~ Michelle Gross, One Percent of You

That night, my schoolteacher mother succumbed to the power of rock and roll. And even when a tie-dyed Romeo in front of us offered her a spoon of cocaine, she chose to ignore it. It was an unforgettable night, if only for what she said quietly as we walked to the car. “I understand your music,” she said. “It’s better than ours.” ~ Cameron Crowe, The Uncool

The creature was never here. The creature is always here. The creature is her own ferocious, indefatigable will: her hunger to survive; her determination to be heard; her yearning to be understood. It has been with her from her first furious, motherless howl and it will stay with her until her last letting go. ~ Caroline Lea, Love, Sex, and Frankenstein

“Why should money make evil comprehensible to anyone? But it does precisely this. Greed, violence, cruelty — money can explain them. Money can make the most heinous act seem like a sane one. A business decision. A necessary calculation. Evil’s genius is to costume itself as sense.” ~ Karen Russell, The Antidote

“It’s fascinating. How so much of love is about who you are with someone.” ~ Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation

“Cats are assholes. I get it. But do you know why people like cats, despite their asshole-ness? It’s because they don’t fucking talk . If they did, and they were all like you, they’d all be extinct because we’d have killed you all by now.” ~ Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl

Such liberty and abandon, such fearful defiance. They were brilliant in their avarice, quarrelsome beyond imagining, ready to die for bad and good ideas alike. ~ Ian McEwan, What We Can Know

Taking my assigned cue once more, all the world being if not a stage then at least a farce, I cleared my throat and intoned my line as if it were gospel truth. “I listen with a good heart.” ~ Stephen Graham Jones, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

“He tastes like lost dreams and a thousand sleepless nights. He tastes like young love and bitter heartbreak.” ~ Stacia Stark, We Who Will Die

Whenever I am told to go back to where I came from, I can’t help but think: Why don’t you go where I came from? You’d love it there. ~ Omar El Akkad, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“Look at them. They’re pretending, they behave as though they still have some control over their lives and make momentous decisions about which vegetable to cook first.” ~ Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

...when we know about suffering, when we are proximal to it, we are capable of extraordinary generosity. We can do and be so much for each other. But only when we see one another in our full humanity. Not as statistics or problems, but as people who deserve to be alive in the world. ~ John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis

When their eyes had locked, he’d squeezed Ilya’s fingers, just a little. That look, and that squeeze, had said so many things to Ilya. I know. We were supposed to stand alone at the top, but we will always be there together. ~ Rachel Reid, Heated Rivalry

“Still, humans were humans. They wanted you to know their opinions about your body, even if you hadn’t asked.” ~ Annalee Newitz, Automatic Noodle

“They walk and walk. No one stops. It’s like we’re all still infected. We choose to be blind to each other’s suffering. It might make things easier to bear, but our hearts are cold.” ~ Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark

It is exhausting to be near such greed. ~ Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

They were the inverse and counter to each other. A healer and killer, circling slowly, the push and pull inexorable. ~ SenLinYu, Alchemised

“In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.” ~ Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child

Life mattered. It had dignity and purpose. There was some part of her — a Self, an essential Cece — that was immutable. Safe from corruption. The part of her that loved to swim; that came up with dorky aphorisms; that couldn’t hear a song from her childhood, no matter how cloying or obnoxious, without leaping up to dance....What was life, if she lost that? ~ Eric Puchner, Dream State

“And on and on it goes, in a thousand directions, everything occurring at once, in a great storm of the present, of now — all those lovely wrecked lives.” ~ Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins

“You’re allowed to stop baring your teeth at the world and take a breath. Because I’ve got you.” ~ Callie Hart, Brimstone

“We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship — to teach, if we are called upon; to be taught, if we are fortunate.” ~ Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate