The Saucy Wenches Book Club

Wynn thought that if wolves sang, and coyotes, and elk and birds, and wind, and we, too, it was probably in response to a music we didn’t know we could hear. ~ Peter Heller, The River

“Lionesses. Us. Can’t you just see it Ellie? Someday, you and me — we’ll do great things. We’ll live life for ourselves. And we will help others. We are cubs now, maybe. But we will grow to be lionesses. Strong women who will make things happen.” ~ Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran

“I think he got dicked by the dangling dong of destiny, that’s what I think.” ~ Sally Hepworth, Mad Mabel

Don said, “You never believed in fate.” Rodney snorted. “No. You and me? We weren’t destined to be. We’re here because we worked for it. We worked hard. We survived some of the worst things people can live through. It’s not fate. It was you and me who did it. No one and nothing else.” ~ T.J. Klune, We Burned So Bright

“You need to be someone worth falling in love with — you teach them how to love you by showing them who you are.” ~ Rufi Thorpe, Margo’s Got Money Troubles

“People are art,” he said. “It’s enough to just watch the people.” ~ Ann Patchett, Whistler

Once, she heard a guy refer to her as “sex on a stick,” and although she actually had no idea what that meant, she understood it to be a superpower. ~ Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

All that matters is that he does care and that he wants Charlie to know it. He never wants Charlie to doubt it. Maybe that’s the trick to relationships — with friends or lovers or colleagues who become something like family. ~ Cat Sebastian, Star Shipped

It was the most important day of my life. The day I stopped working on my husband, my farm, my family, and returned to work on an old, beloved project: myself. I walked back inside to make dinner for my family. After dinner, I knocked myself up again. ~ Caro Claire Burke, Yesteryear

The prime directive of all living beings is simple — do what you must — but only the wicked do what they can. ~ W.H. Chizmar, Them

And I wonder how I ever believed not falling in love with this male was an option. How I ever believed I was capable of pulling myself from his atmosphere. ~ Sarah A. Parker, The Ballad of Falling Dragons

There was something about him slightly more suggestible than other children, a thinness between the world he lived in and the world of stories. Not entirely unexpected of a child of two people devoted to books. ~ Daniel Mason, Country People

Mostly, Mad just didn’t like feeling any more uncomfortable than she already would be, filing into a huge arena to watch a sport that, truth be told, she didn’t exactly comprehend. But they were here, right? This is what a family did. They showed up for things they didn’t totally understand and wore uncomfortable clothes and they shouted your name nonstop because they wanted you to understand that, win or lose, they loved you. ~ Kevin Wilson, Run for the Hills

—Not a preamble. A beginning. And it’s too late now to make a difference to the outcome. All we can do is choose who we will save. —And let everyone else go hang? She smiled at me, a tight little smile. —Or save no one at all. ~ Jessie Greengrass, The High House

“A Dirty Shirley,” I said. “Yeah, I want to try that one.” “Cats don’t drink cocktails,” I said. “Cats don’t shoot lasers from their eyes, either, but here we are, Carl. Mama needs a night off.” ~ Matt Dinniman, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario

“Well, I believe we’re all one. Same consciousness of awareness or whatever you want to call it. The universe is expanding now but soon — in a few more billion years — we’ll start shrinking back again to what we were before the Big Bang. We’ll get smaller and smaller and then for a moment we’ll be a tiny speck. After that they say we’ll be nothing — we won’t exist inside a black hole. Then there’ll be another bang and we’ll return....” “I have loved you all my life,” I whisper. “See you after the next bang.” ~ Lily King, Heart the Lover

She didn’t want Lee Turner to kiss her, or marry her, or fall in love with her. She wanted him to sit beside her on this porch and watch the stars with her for as long as she was still alive. She wanted to exist beside him, to be real and whole in someone else’s eyes, to bare her soul to someone and have them stay beside her anyway. ~ Kylie Lee Baker, Japanese Gothic

“Shove that shit down. So deep down it’s out of sight. Don’t spend another moment on it. Make it go from a reality to a memory to a feeling you sometimes get on winter days. Then let that feeling drive you to do somethin’ great.” ~ Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

This happens all the time. People always think the third margarita is a good idea, and they’re always wrong. ~ Elin Hildebrand, The Five-Star Weekend

I told her I had not unpacked my swim trunks, as I had just arrived. “Oh, go without,” she said, waving away my worries. “It’s more satisfying to swim in the nude. Are you concerned about this old lady seeing something? Don’t concern yourself. I am completely blind!” She stepped close to a painting and, with a delicate pinch of her forefinger and thumb, removed a single hair. A brisk smile at me. She was not blind in the least. ~ Andrew Sean Greer, Villa Coco

“And it sneaks up on me – this sensation. A sensation of deepest comfort. Here we are, doing small things, nothing really, just talking, watching television. And yet in the nothingness there is a life more real than any wedding or christening or birthday party. In these tiny moments, when the spectacle is stripped away, when there is no reason for the day, what’s left appears to be something true, something fundamental to being a person.” ~ Ben Reeves, Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt

It strikes me that, with all the cruelties in this world, there is still nothing quite as dangerous as kindness. ~ Sally Hepworth, Mad Mabel

But no one’s looking at their phones anymore. Not really. It’s like it took the end of the world for people to look up and see each other. ~ T.J. Klune, We Burned So Bright

“I had in my hands the most precious of treasures, a spring from which to drink the knowledge of that world to which I would never have access.” ~ Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

After I’m finished peeing, I stand up straight, close my eyes, organize my thoughts, and click my heels together three times. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. I throw the [outhouse] door open and say, “Shit.” ~ Caro Claire Burke, Yesteryear

“My entire life’s assignment is to ask questions. Why else are we even here?” ~ Kathryn Stockett, The Calamity Club

“Because my mother taught me to never discuss sex, politics, or the state of one’s bowels.... And if you don’t stop this, I’ll have to tell you about my constipation.” ~ Elizabeth Strout, The Things We Never Say

“It was books. I read and read. Went to the library as much as I could. And to bookstores. Lost myself in books. Did you know that books can heal you? They helped restore me.” ~ Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran

“Is it possible to love so desperately that life is unbearable? I don't mean unrequited, I mean being in the love. In the midst of it and desperate. Because knowing it will end, because everything does. End.” ~ Peter Heller, The Dog Stars

Every single game, he told them, every moment of your life, is just putting in the effort so that you can hold on to what you love for as long as you possibly can. ~ Kevin Wilson, Run for the Hills

“I’ve been rethinking my move to Florida,” Viva said to Twilly on the ride to the restaurant. “You’ve got every right to be discouraged — employers who might be murderers, a married suitor who’s also a crooked politician, and a Hitler-worshipping landlord with his own armed mob of mental defectives.” “What a ray of sunshine you are.” “But now you’ve met that special someone,” Twilly said. “Me.” ~ Carl Hiaasen, Fever Beach

He had lived a sheltered life, but had read enough books to know that flagrantly eccentric characters often served as gatekeepers to danger. ~ Daniel Mason, Country People

Symbiosis and sustenance and unspeakable beauty and the sudden, savage violence of predation. This is the reef, home to five hundred million. This is the reef as I have known it. This is what I wanted any child of ours to know. ~ EJ Swift, The Coral Bones

“If you need something to worship, then worship life — all life, every last crawling bit of it! We’re all in this beauty together!” ~ Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“I’ll bathe in his contempt until I’m covered in every drop of his wrath.” ~ Leena Kazak, Between Tides & Thunder

“The beginning of a novel is like a first date. You hope that from the first lines an urgent magic will take hold, and you will sink into the story like a hot bath, giving yourself over entirely. But this hope is tempered by the expectation that, in reality, you are about to have to learn a bunch of people’s names and follow along politely like you are attending the baby shower of a woman you hardly know. And that’s fine, goodness knows you've fallen in love with books that didn’t grab you in the first paragraph. But that doesn’t stop you from wishing they would, from wishing they would come right up to you in the dark of your mind and kiss you on the throat.” ~ Rufi Thorpe, Margo’s Got Money Troubles

“Keep a place in your heart for things that are beautiful,” Pete would say to her. “Beauty’ll help you get through dark times.” ~ M.L. Stedman, A Far-Flung Life

“Think about life as a fence,” said Miss Winkle. “And each time we transgress, each time we hurt one another, we must tap a nail into that fence. When we’re ready, we can pull those nails out of the fence. But even still, there will be holes.” “Can the holes be fixed?” asked Bud. “Can they be patched?” Miss Winkle shook her head. Bud’s shoulders sunk. “But it’s alright,” said Miss Winkle. “The fence is still standing. The light can shine through.” ~ Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

We all float through space on a rock, hurtling toward forever. So many of us forget that it’s other people who make life worth living. As much as we like to think so, we can’t do this alone. Everyone needs someone. Maybe not all the time, but enough that it matters. ~ T.J. Klune, We Burned So Bright

You are right about what you said—we are thirty in our hearts, before all the disappointment, all the ways it turned out to be so much more painful than we thought it would be, but then again, it has also been magic. ~ Virginia Evans, The Correspondent: A Novel

Sometimes there was no third book. No resolution no matter how many times you reread or how hard you wished for it. ~ Ilona Andrews, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

If one concentrated on one thing and then another — the good things in each moment — the fear wrapped deep in the gut seemed to unswell, like an iced bruise. Still there, but quieter. ~ Peter Heller, The River

“You and me are special,” he started. “There’s no one else I’d rather spend time with than you. There’s no one else I’d rather talk to than you. And there’s no one else I’d rather kiss than you.” ~ Carley Fortune, Every Summer After

Ahh, the planet earth. A whole lot of culture. A whole lot of spunk. So many dumbasses. ~ Matt Dinniman, The Gate of the Feral Gods

We embrace and I think of all the other men and women who must have sat beside this ancient hearth, sharing their good news. The centuries pass but the hope and optimism that accompanies each new family at its beginning is the same. What else is there in life, really, of such significance? This momentary pause in which everything changes. ~ Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

Once we’re comfortable with death, we’ll do a better job with our lives. ~ Ann Patchett, Whistler

“I’m fucked,” he murmured in Russian. “I am so fucking in love and it’s horrible.” ~ Rachel Reid, The Long Game

“Love is crushing. Love is something you let yourself feel at your own peril, despite your better sense.” ~ Lily King, Heart the Lover

“Books ... are mirrors for the soul. So if you catch a glimpse of someone’s soul, you will know the mirror for them.” ~ Matt Haig, The Midnight Train

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. ~ Frank Herbert, Dune