The Saucy Wenches Book Club

He watches the woman and her dog walk back down the alley. She stops and draws her finger through the air, as if she were writing something on the sky. The mist swirls and snakes around her like a great pale cat. It draws itself into a shape like an archway or a door. She steps through it, and is gone. ~ Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

I was born on the night of Samhain, when the barrier between the worlds is whisper-thin and when magic, old magic, sings its heady and sweet song to anyone who cares to hear it. ~ Once a Witch , Carolyn MacCullough

“She is all the great heroines of the world in one. She is more than an individual. I love her, and I must make her love me. I want to make Romeo jealous. I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.” ― Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray

“The three of you have one solution to every problem. Murder. No key fits every lock.” ... “Someone tries to betray the High King, murder . Someone gives you a harsh look, murder . Someone disrespects you, murder . Someone ruins your laundry, murder .” [snip] “Your ridiculous family might be surprised to find that not everything is solved by murder,” Locke calls after me. “We would be surprised to find that,” I call back. ― Holly Black, The Wicked King

That was what magic did. It revealed the heart of who you’d been before life took away your belief in the possible. ~ Leigh Bardugo, Ninth House

“It’s not an obstacle course,” he said. “You can’t go around it—you have to go through it. Walk with your head up no matter what they throw at you.” ~ Colson Whitehead, The Nickel Boys

“To be kin to a dragon, you must not only have a soul of water. You must have the blood of the sea, and the sea is not always pure. It is not any one thing. There is darkness in it, and danger, and cruelty. It can raze great cities with its rage. Its depths are unknowable; they do not see the touch of the sun. To be a Miduchi is not to be pure, Tané. It is to be the living sea. That is why I chose you. You have a dragon’s heart.” ~ Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

Only in Faerieland is a giant toad the less conspicuous choice. ~ Holly Black, The Cruel Prince

What does it taste like when you are so free you can follow the sun until it dips down into the ocean? ~ Kira Jane Buxton, Hollow Kingdom

Ya need some girlfriends, hon, ‘cause they’re furever. Without a vow. A clutch of women’s the most tender, most tough place on Earth. ~ Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“It’s a very special couch,” I told her. “Mad Rogan once fell asleep on it. We’re thinking of having it gold-plated and donated to a museum . . .” ― Ilona Andrews,  Sapphire Flames ( Hidden Legacy #4)

This is not magic. This is the way the world is, only very few people take the time to stop and note it. ~ Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“Might that attitude be a form of self-protection?” “You mean am I deluding myself?” “That’s another way to put it.” “If I say yes, then I’m not deluded. And if I say no, it’s further evidence of delusion.” ~ Leni Zumas, Red Clocks

She accumulated the dust of other worlds on her skin like ten thousand perfumes, and left constellations of wistful men and impossible tales in her wake. ~ Alix E. Harrow, The Ten Thousand Doors of January

“If she was gone, this was it for him. He had lived over a thousand five hundred years. It was enough. If Lijuan had risen monstrous while he and Elena slept, he’d do what he could to burn out that scourge because Elena would want him to do that, but he would not live thousands of years without her. He could not live another day without her.” – Nalini Singh, Archangel’s War

“S-word,” she muttered, sliding out of the car. “Bloody F-wording S-word!” This was small relief to her feelings of anxiety and oppression. It really wasn’t fair. Who needed the relief of occasional bad language more than a mother of small children? Maybe she should start using her mother’s “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ!” instead. Jem had incorporated that one into his own collection of expletives before he turned four and had long since taught it to Mandy; they wouldn’t be warped by hearing it. ~ Diana Gabaldon, Written in My Own Heart’s Blood

“In darkness, we are naked. Our truest selves. Night is when fear comes to us at its fullest, when we have no way to fight it,” Ead continued. “It will do everything it can to seep inside you. Sometimes it may succeed — but never think that you are the night.” ~ Samantha Shannon, The Priory of the Orange Tree

“I didn’t know you could dance.” I sounded okay, not like the high-strung mess inside my head. “There’s a lot you don’t know.” Of course there was. He was the last of a race the fae had all but wiped out centuries ago. He looked young, my age, but he wasn’t. He looked human, but he wasn’t that either. He had a hunger inside him, one that had once looked at me like prey. The Nightshade’s Touch , (Messenger Chronicles #3), Pippa DaCosta

A thread in a tapestry. That’s what it had felt like the night she’d left the gold for Yrene in Innish. Like pulling a thread in a tapestry, and seeing just how far and wide it went. All the way to the southern continent, it seemed. And it had rippled back with an army and a healed, happy friend. Or as happy as any of them might be at the moment. ~ Sarah J. Maas, Kingdom of Ash