The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“I am here to do a job that never gets any easier. I’m here to stand up to those who have hurt me. I am here to reclaim my life.” ~ Virginia Roberts Giuffre, Nobody's Girl: A Memoir of Surviving Abuse and Fighting for Justice

It might be true when they say, “choose your lover wisely since you’ll become a reflection of each other.” ~ Michelle Gross, One Percent of You

That night, my schoolteacher mother succumbed to the power of rock and roll. And even when a tie-dyed Romeo in front of us offered her a spoon of cocaine, she chose to ignore it. It was an unforgettable night, if only for what she said quietly as we walked to the car. “I understand your music,” she said. “It’s better than ours.” ~ Cameron Crowe, The Uncool

The creature was never here. The creature is always here. The creature is her own ferocious, indefatigable will: her hunger to survive; her determination to be heard; her yearning to be understood. It has been with her from her first furious, motherless howl and it will stay with her until her last letting go. ~ Caroline Lea, Love, Sex, and Frankenstein

“Why should money make evil comprehensible to anyone? But it does precisely this. Greed, violence, cruelty — money can explain them. Money can make the most heinous act seem like a sane one. A business decision. A necessary calculation. Evil’s genius is to costume itself as sense.” ~ Karen Russell, The Antidote

“It’s fascinating. How so much of love is about who you are with someone.” ~ Emily Henry, People We Meet on Vacation

“Cats are assholes. I get it. But do you know why people like cats, despite their asshole-ness? It’s because they don’t fucking talk . If they did, and they were all like you, they’d all be extinct because we’d have killed you all by now.” ~ Matt Dinniman, Dungeon Crawler Carl

Such liberty and abandon, such fearful defiance. They were brilliant in their avarice, quarrelsome beyond imagining, ready to die for bad and good ideas alike. ~ Ian McEwan, What We Can Know

Taking my assigned cue once more, all the world being if not a stage then at least a farce, I cleared my throat and intoned my line as if it were gospel truth. “I listen with a good heart.” ~ Stephen Graham Jones, The Buffalo Hunter Hunter

“He tastes like lost dreams and a thousand sleepless nights. He tastes like young love and bitter heartbreak.” ~ Stacia Stark, We Who Will Die

Whenever I am told to go back to where I came from, I can’t help but think: Why don’t you go where I came from? You’d love it there. ~ Omar El Akkad, One Day Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“Look at them. They’re pretending, they behave as though they still have some control over their lives and make momentous decisions about which vegetable to cook first.” ~ Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

...when we know about suffering, when we are proximal to it, we are capable of extraordinary generosity. We can do and be so much for each other. But only when we see one another in our full humanity. Not as statistics or problems, but as people who deserve to be alive in the world. ~ John Green, Everything Is Tuberculosis

When their eyes had locked, he’d squeezed Ilya’s fingers, just a little. That look, and that squeeze, had said so many things to Ilya. I know. We were supposed to stand alone at the top, but we will always be there together. ~ Rachel Reid, Heated Rivalry

“Still, humans were humans. They wanted you to know their opinions about your body, even if you hadn’t asked.” ~ Annalee Newitz, Automatic Noodle

“They walk and walk. No one stops. It’s like we’re all still infected. We choose to be blind to each other’s suffering. It might make things easier to bear, but our hearts are cold.” ~ Sequoia Nagamatsu, How High We Go in the Dark

It is exhausting to be near such greed. ~ Kiran Desai, The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny

They were the inverse and counter to each other. A healer and killer, circling slowly, the push and pull inexorable. ~ SenLinYu, Alchemised

“In my old age, I see that life itself is often more fantastic and terrible than the stories we believed as children, and that perhaps there is no harm in finding magic among the trees.” ~ Eowyn Ivey, The Snow Child

Life mattered. It had dignity and purpose. There was some part of her — a Self, an essential Cece — that was immutable. Safe from corruption. The part of her that loved to swim; that came up with dorky aphorisms; that couldn’t hear a song from her childhood, no matter how cloying or obnoxious, without leaping up to dance....What was life, if she lost that? ~ Eric Puchner, Dream State

“And on and on it goes, in a thousand directions, everything occurring at once, in a great storm of the present, of now — all those lovely wrecked lives.” ~ Jess Walter, Beautiful Ruins

“You’re allowed to stop baring your teeth at the world and take a breath. Because I’ve got you.” ~ Callie Hart, Brimstone

“We step out of our solar system into the universe seeking only peace and friendship — to teach, if we are called upon; to be taught, if we are fortunate.” ~ Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate