The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“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