The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“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