The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“There is no such thing as a happy place. Because when you are happy, everywhere is a happy place. And when you are sad, everywhere is a sad place.” ~ Alison Espach, The Wedding People

“If a girl can't get herself off next to her crush after breaking the space-time continuum, then honestly, when can she?” ~ Erin Sterling, The Wedding Witch

“In winter”, said Merowdis, lost in her thoughts, “the wood is supposed to be asleep. That is what people say. But I don't think it's true. In spring and summer the trees and creatures are preoccupied. Everyone is busy. In winter there is silence.” There was silence. But not an empty silence. “In winter the wood is listening”, said Merowdis. ~ Susanna Clarke, The Wood at Midwinter

The rooms were very still while the pages were softly turned and the winter sunshine crept in to touch the bright heads and serious faces with a Christmas greeting. ~ Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

“Because if you stop you admit the bad stuff has won, don’t you? All you can do is keep going. Refuse to be beaten, even when you are beaten. The bad stuff only wins if you let it. I refuse to be beaten, Cassie. I refuse.” ~ Gareth Brown, The Book of Doors

“His smile makes me want to swear my soul to whatever god created him ... And he talks like a poet, a cadence in his words that’s half song. It cracks my chest apart. Decides something for me that I hadn’t known was an option.” ~ Sara Raasch, The Nightmare Before Kissmas

As far as I knew, there hadn’t been a space program since it had failed—decades ago—to return a profit for investors ...he gently informed me astronaut was the prevailing idiom for the sixteen or so families who ran coastal economies and owned mineral rights and satellite clusters and news factories and prisons and most clean water and such shipping as remained. ~ Leif Enger, I Cheerfully Refuse

If when I explain human behavior you insist on logic, we won’t get far. ~ Marie-Helene Bertino, Beautyland

“You won’t necessarily win against fate, but you should at least put up a fight.” ~ Liane Moriarty, Here One Moment

“If you think I won’t tie you up and lock you in my bedroom before I let you step outside in this weather, then you don’t know me at all.” ~ Ali Hazelwood, Cruel Winter with You

And tenderness is a strength. It isn’t pity, as some like to claim, or weakness, as others like to say, and it certainly doesn’t pity or weaken the one receiving it. On the contrary, that kind of intimacy restores parts fallen away, stripped from us, or given away in reckless, unthinking moments; a little tenderness can gather and restitch the scattered bits of the soul. ~ Karen Marie Moning, The House at Watch Hill

“The world is full of rattlesnakes. Sometimes you step on them and they don’t bite. Sometimes you step over them and they bite anyway.” ~ Stephen King, You Like It Darker: Stories

The folly of man—the folly of the blasted silos he had helped to build—this assumption that things needed saving. They ought to have been left on their own, both people and the planet. Mankind had the right to go extinct. That’s what life did: it went extinct. It made room for the next in line. ~ Hugh Howey, Dust ( Silo #3)

Shoulders back, chest puffed, I smile widely, flashing all of my teeth, my eyes crinkling in the corners. Max takes a step back, shielding his eyes. “What the hell are you doing?” “Showing you my jolliness.” “Well, fuck, stop. It’s terrifying.” ~ Meghan Quinn, How My Neighbour Stole Christmas

“Do you have a life philosophy? ... Words you live by.” She didn’t live by words. She lived by life. But the question was sweet, and she did her best. She fed him that classic bit of Quebecoise wisdom. “Attache ta tuque et lache pas la patate!” “Meaning?” “Put on your little beanie cap and don’t release the potato.” Bart Mannis laughed so hard he almost ran them off the highway. But the meaning was clear, wasn’t it? Hold on tight and keep going. Just keep going. Like any good creature of the tides. ~ Richard Powers, Playground

But dreaming is like the garden. You can step out of prison and feel the sky around you. In a dream you can be anywhere. You can be free. ~ Laini Taylor, Strange the Dreamer

“Yes, but them people liked it, Jim. Did you see their faces? They had to know them was lies, but they wanted to believe. What do you make of that?” “Folks be funny lak dat. Dey takes the lies dey want and throws away the truths dat scares ’em.” ~ Percival Everett, James

He was summer and she was fall. He was adventure and she was comfort. But right now, on the cusp between the two seasons, in this liminal space they’d carved out for themselves, they fit just right. ~ Laurie Gilmore, The Cinnamon Bun Book Store

“The road to enlightenment is long and difficult, and you should try not to forget snacks and magazines.” ~ Anne Lamott, Traveling Mercies

“Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives!” ~ Abraham Verghese, The Covenant of Water

“Every era puts invisible shackles on those who have lived through it, and I can only dance in my chains.” ~ Liu Cixin, The Three Body Problem

“I told him I was a zero-dimensional, nonexistent point, floating in space, until I met him. Yes, I know. What an embarrassing love letter! Attempting to be poetic about geometry! A modern woman would never write such a thing. You should most definitely exist before you meet a man! You should have your own career, your own hobbies, your own thoughts, and your own financial plan!” ~ Liane Moriarty, Here One Moment

I noticed two of the females who worked there were laughing and pointing toward my midsection. Again, I was confused. Weren’t men meant to go in bookshops? Was there some kind of war of ridicule going on between the genders? Did booksellers spend all their time mocking their customers? Or was it that I wasn’t wearing any clothes? Who knew? ~ Matt Haig, The Humans

“That was the day I remembered the future, reimagined a path of years with books to read and bass lines to explore. The idea was so tempting I set it aside, but it kept returning, wider each time. Long walks might be out there down unknown roads.” ~ Leif Enger, I Cheerfully Refuse

That’s what we women do. From the hour of our birth to the birth of our daughters to the dying of our grandmothers and mothers, we spin pain on our looms into a joyful fabric, for what would be the point of doing less? ~ Karen Marie Moning, The House at Watch Hill

“Autumn light is the loveliest light there is. Soft, forgiving, it makes all the world a brightened dream.” ~ Margaret Renkl, The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year

Stars are, after all, in the sky above us, even at midday, but we only see them when the sun takes its leave ... Because, while it’s true that only light can drive out darkness, there are some forms of light that only darkness can reveal. ~ Leigh Ann Henion, Night Magic

Rich people, thought Judy — she thought this then, and she thinks it now — generally become most enraged when they sense they’re about to be held accountable for their wrongs. ~ Liz Moore, The God of the Woods

...like most people who are afflicted by preoccupation with success, he remains oblivious to the true pleasures in life. As such, he is willing to sacrifice them. ~ Molly McGhee, Jonathan Abernathy You Are Kind

“Well,” I say, “life is the process of learning shit that you never ever wanted to hear.” ~ Nick Harkaway, Titanium Noir

I always think that the quickest way to understand someone is to look at what’s on their bookshelves. Especially if they are honest bookshelves, not the fancy ornamental kind. And there was nothing fancy or ornamental about this place. ~ Matt Haig, The Life Impossible

Everyone would soon have more riches and power than they knew what to do with. That was the goal. That was the game’s win condition. It never occurred to me that it might also be the losing one. ~ Richard Powers, Playground

“I am never going to know how to live without a community of purpose. I am going to keep looking for this for the rest of my life, whatever happens.” ~ Naomi Alderman, The Future

“The amount of time you spent together probably matters, but less time doesn’t mean less love. Whether it’s a day or year, human or cat, and even if we may never see them again, there are those who are irreplaceable in our lives.” ~ Syou Ishida, We’ll Prescribe You a Cat

Come All Hallows’ Eve, the walls would stand or fall. Weirdly, I’d begun looking forward to Halloween, because at least my waiting would be over. Limbo would end. I’d know what I had to deal with. I’d know exactly how good or bad things were going to be. I’d know if I could be relieved — a year would buy me plenty of time to figure out what to do — or if I should be terrified. Either way, I’d have concretes. Faefever ~~Karen Marie Moning 

I was reminded that humans have to read books. And that takes time. Lots of time. A human can’t just swallow every book going, can’t chew different tomes simultaneously, or gulp down near-infinite knowledge in a matter of seconds. They can’t just pop a word capsule in their mouth like we can ... No wonder they were a species of primitives. By the time they have read enough books to actually reach a state of knowledge where they can do anything with it, they are dead. ~ Matt Haig, The Humans

“We humans have this wonderful intelligence. We should use this intelligence to increase the world’s happiness, to create peace, to bring greater compassion to society — sometimes I feel that’s our destination. To try to make a contribution to developing a compassionate society.” ~ Andri Snær Magnason, On Time and Water

Raihn. He was on his knees, staring up at me. And that—the way he looked at me—was the first thing that felt real. Real, and raw, and… and confusing. Because he looked at me in sheer awe—like I was the most incredible thing he had ever seen. Like I was a fucking goddess. ~ Carissa Broadbent, The Serpent & the Wings of Night

Far more discoveries, a colleague once noted, start with a “Huh, that’s weird,” than with a light-bulb moment. ~ Joe Roman, Eat, Poop, Die: How Animals Make Our World

I’m so glad I live in a world where there are Octobers ~ Carley Fortune, This Summer Will Be Different

Some deem stillness and dancing opposites. They are two sides of the same coin, and that coin is the currency of life. You must learn how to be still. You must remember the dance. Then, to do more than exist—to truly live—you must learn how to do both at the same time. ~ Karen Marie Moning, The House at Watch Hill

“It feels like a new word needs to be created to encompass the last two hours spent in my bedroom. Like, I don’t know…mind-blowingly…unbecredifabulous.” ~ Freida McFadden, The Boyfriend

Charisma does not originate inside the person called “charismatic.” It comes from the need of others to believe that special people exist. ~ Rachel Kushner, Creation Lake

“I’m afraid I have not gotten over my resentment of him for saving me from the snow king’s court in Ljosland earlier this year, and have made a solemn vow to myself that I shall be the one to rescue him from whatever faerie trouble we next find ourselves in. Yes, I realize this is illogical, given that it requires Wendell to end up in some dire circumstance, which would ideally best be avoided, but there it is. I’m quite determined.” ~ Heather Fawcett, Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands

Play was evolution’s way of building brains, and any creature with a brain as developed as a giant oceanic manta sure used it. If you want to make something smarter, teach it to play. ~ Richard Powers, Playground

“I’m not kidding, Cal, you need cases with a better class of suspect. These two are ... Like if I would villain — which I would not, because I am quite law-abiding, but if I would — I would not villain with these guys with someone else’s dick.” ~ Nick Harkaway, Titanium Noir

“All reading, in short, is telepathy and all reading is time travel. It connects us to everyone and everywhere and every time and every imagined dream.” ~ Matt Haig, The Life Impossible

“But we tried sane, Brad. Sane ain’t working for us anymore. It’s time to try crazy. That’s what we do out here.” ~ Dave Barry, Swamp Story

“But I believe the greatest weapon we have at our disposal is our voices. And I am going to use my voice for you, and for me. Hate is loud. We are louder.” ~ T.J. Klune, Somewhere Beyond the Sea

The kind of edge I looked for—this man had in spades. His edges had edges. There was a kind of ... were I fanciful, I’d say an aura that surrounded him, silvery and seductive and stitched somehow of both luminosity and utter absence of light, as if he wore a full moon’s brilliance purled to midnight as a cloak. ~ Karen Marie Moning, The House at Watch Hill