The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“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