The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“All the things that are wrong in the world seem conquered by a library’s simple unspoken promise: Here I am, please tell me your story; here is my story, please listen.” ~ Susan Orlean, The Library Book

Kisses are foolish things. The pleasure of rational thought is not enhanced by them, and the inconvenience is often considerable. ~ India Holton, The League of Gentlewomen Witches ( Dangerous Damsels #2)

“I loved the way he touched me, like his hands had questions and my skin could answer all of them at once.” ~ Sarah Gailey, The Echo Wife

“When you read a novel, you are immersing yourself in what it’s like to be inside another person’s head. You are simulating a social situation. You are imagining other people and their experiences in a deep and complex way. So maybe, he said, if you read a lot of novels, you will become better at actually understanding other people off the page. Perhaps fiction is a kind of empathy gym, boosting your ability to empathize with other people—which is one of the most rich and precious forms of focus we have.” ~ Johann Hari, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention—and How to Think Deeply Again

“This story is jagged, could cut a deep wound. It isn’t a story I can tell with a thread and a needle, stitching in clean lines. It’s shards or nothing.” ~ Sarai Walker, The Cherry Robbers

“If you run from me, I’ll chase you. And I’ll find you.” She stared at him, allowing the depth of her vulnerabillity to show for the briefest moment. “Promise?” Bones raised her hand and kissed it. “Promise.” ~ Jeaniene Frost, The Other Half of the Grave ( Night Huntress #1.1)

“Just because something isn’t perfect doesn’t mean we need to throw it away.” ~ Helen Hoang, The Heart Principle

“Tomorrow is tomorrow. Over there is over there. And here and now is not a bad place and time to be, especially when so much of the unknown is beautiful.” ~ Ryka Aoki, Light from Uncommon Stars

“Would you like to have dinner with me, Nora?” He heads off my response with, “As colleagues. Ones who can’t fulfill each other’s checklists.” “I wasn’t aware you had a checklist,” I say. “Of course I have a checklist.” His eyes glint in the dark. “What am I, an animal?” ~ Emily Henry, Book Lovers

“When life gives you lemons, make sure you know whose eyes you need to squeeze them in.” ~ Colleen Hoover, Ugly Love

“She prefers the other joke that says that if an arrow is to hit the target, it needs to have missed everything else first.” ~ Hervé Le Tellier, The Anomaly: A Novel

I can’t imagine a home without an overflow of books. The point of books is to have way too many but to always feel you never have enough, or the right one at the right moment, but then sometimes to find you'd longed to fall asleep reading the Aspern Papers, and there it is.” ~ Louise Erdrich, Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country

“But she was a woman. A woman should be like water, able to flow over and around anything.” ~ Liu Cixin, The Three Body Problem

“The drivers here are horrible. And by horrible, I mean they don’t realize I have someplace to be.” ~ Maria Semple, Where’d You Go, Bernadette

She was the one always pretending to have finished anything anyone happened to be reading; and she was the only one with this notion that the way to demonstrate your superior reading was to go around telling people the plots of novels they were in the middle of. ~ Kazuo Ishiguro, Never Let Me Go

Courage is the root of change—and change is what we’re chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others’ opinions of what you can and cannot achieve. And no more allowing anyone to pigeonhole you into useless categories of sex, race, economic status, and religion. Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started.” ~ Bonnie Garmus, Lessons in Chemistry

“When women take up space, there is less available for men. But it means we get a whole story instead of half of one.” ~ Natalie Haynes, Pandora’s Jar: Women in the Greek Myths