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