The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“Because my mother taught me to never discuss sex, politics, or the state of one’s bowels.... And if you don’t stop this, I’ll have to tell you about my constipation.” ~ Elizabeth Strout, The Things We Never Say

“It was books. I read and read. Went to the library as much as I could. And to bookstores. Lost myself in books. Did you know that books can heal you? They helped restore me.” ~ Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran

“Is it possible to love so desperately that life is unbearable? I don't mean unrequited, I mean being in the love. In the midst of it and desperate. Because knowing it will end, because everything does. End.” ~ Peter Heller, The Dog Stars

Every single game, he told them, every moment of your life, is just putting in the effort so that you can hold on to what you love for as long as you possibly can. ~ Kevin Wilson, Run for the Hills

“I’ve been rethinking my move to Florida,” Viva said to Twilly on the ride to the restaurant. “You’ve got every right to be discouraged — employers who might be murderers, a married suitor who’s also a crooked politician, and a Hitler-worshipping landlord with his own armed mob of mental defectives.” “What a ray of sunshine you are.” “But now you’ve met that special someone,” Twilly said. “Me.” ~ Carl Hiaasen, Fever Beach

He had lived a sheltered life, but had read enough books to know that flagrantly eccentric characters often served as gatekeepers to danger. ~ Daniel Mason, Country People

Symbiosis and sustenance and unspeakable beauty and the sudden, savage violence of predation. This is the reef, home to five hundred million. This is the reef as I have known it. This is what I wanted any child of ours to know. ~ EJ Swift, The Coral Bones

“If you need something to worship, then worship life — all life, every last crawling bit of it! We’re all in this beauty together!” ~ Frank Herbert, Dune Messiah

“I’ll bathe in his contempt until I’m covered in every drop of his wrath.” ~ Leena Kazak, Between Tides & Thunder

“The beginning of a novel is like a first date. You hope that from the first lines an urgent magic will take hold, and you will sink into the story like a hot bath, giving yourself over entirely. But this hope is tempered by the expectation that, in reality, you are about to have to learn a bunch of people’s names and follow along politely like you are attending the baby shower of a woman you hardly know. And that’s fine, goodness knows you've fallen in love with books that didn’t grab you in the first paragraph. But that doesn’t stop you from wishing they would, from wishing they would come right up to you in the dark of your mind and kiss you on the throat.” ~ Rufi Thorpe, Margo’s Got Money Troubles

“Keep a place in your heart for things that are beautiful,” Pete would say to her. “Beauty’ll help you get through dark times.” ~ M.L. Stedman, A Far-Flung Life

“Think about life as a fence,” said Miss Winkle. “And each time we transgress, each time we hurt one another, we must tap a nail into that fence. When we’re ready, we can pull those nails out of the fence. But even still, there will be holes.” “Can the holes be fixed?” asked Bud. “Can they be patched?” Miss Winkle shook her head. Bud’s shoulders sunk. “But it’s alright,” said Miss Winkle. “The fence is still standing. The light can shine through.” ~ Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

We all float through space on a rock, hurtling toward forever. So many of us forget that it’s other people who make life worth living. As much as we like to think so, we can’t do this alone. Everyone needs someone. Maybe not all the time, but enough that it matters. ~ T.J. Klune, We Burned So Bright

You are right about what you said—we are thirty in our hearts, before all the disappointment, all the ways it turned out to be so much more painful than we thought it would be, but then again, it has also been magic. ~ Virginia Evans, The Correspondent: A Novel

Sometimes there was no third book. No resolution no matter how many times you reread or how hard you wished for it. ~ Ilona Andrews, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

If one concentrated on one thing and then another — the good things in each moment — the fear wrapped deep in the gut seemed to unswell, like an iced bruise. Still there, but quieter. ~ Peter Heller, The River

“You and me are special,” he started. “There’s no one else I’d rather spend time with than you. There’s no one else I’d rather talk to than you. And there’s no one else I’d rather kiss than you.” ~ Carley Fortune, Every Summer After

Ahh, the planet earth. A whole lot of culture. A whole lot of spunk. So many dumbasses. ~ Matt Dinniman, The Gate of the Feral Gods

We embrace and I think of all the other men and women who must have sat beside this ancient hearth, sharing their good news. The centuries pass but the hope and optimism that accompanies each new family at its beginning is the same. What else is there in life, really, of such significance? This momentary pause in which everything changes. ~ Clare Leslie Hall, Broken Country

Once we’re comfortable with death, we’ll do a better job with our lives. ~ Ann Patchett, Whistler

“I’m fucked,” he murmured in Russian. “I am so fucking in love and it’s horrible.” ~ Rachel Reid, The Long Game

“Love is crushing. Love is something you let yourself feel at your own peril, despite your better sense.” ~ Lily King, Heart the Lover

“Books ... are mirrors for the soul. So if you catch a glimpse of someone’s soul, you will know the mirror for them.” ~ Matt Haig, The Midnight Train

Once men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them. ~ Frank Herbert, Dune

“You want to throw me down. And I, prideful, disdainful, godless, want to drag you into the dirt with me.” ~ Rachel Gillig, The Knight and the Moth

“You’re supposed to yell fire , though. Because no one comes when you yell rape , didn’t you know that, Bunny?” ~ Mona Awad, Bunny

What redemption there is in being loved: we are always our best selves when loved by another. Nothing can replace this. ~ Maggie O’Farrell, Land

You keep trying to divide us. Don’t you realize what you’ve created? We have been tempered in the fires of hell, and we are now past the point of being broken. Your downfall has already been written in the stars. You may hurt us. You may kill us all. But it’s not going to matter. ~ Matt Dinniman, A Parade of Horribles ( Dungeon Crawler Carl #8)

“I didn’t expect I’d be wishing there was alcohol on this mission as early as Day One, but here we are.” ~ Mason Coile (Andrew Pyper), Exiles

“True love doesn’t expire, Raeve. It clings to you like a weight, even when you’re drowning.” ~ Sarah A. Parker, The Ballad of Falling Dragons

“In early June the world of leaf and blade and flowers explodes, and every sunset is different.” ~ John Steinbeck, The Winter of Our Discontent

Power was the ability to destroy without needing to. To do it not out of necessity, but as an act of pure excess. ~ Ray Nayler, The Tusks of Extinction

Kissing George was like stepping inside a house I’d never seen but somehow knew was home. ~ Carley Fortune, Our Perfect Storm

If you give a girl a taste of fresh air and then take it away, she will grow fierce and wild to get that fresh air back again. ~ Kathryn Stockett, The Calamity Club

I am not a snob. I just take books more seriously than other people and am bad at pretending otherwise. ~ Laurie Frankel, Enormous Wings

So blind we humans are — so blind. To each other and to ourselves, moving through life as though through shadows, putting out a hand in the dark and thinking we have touched someone. And maybe we have... But mostly we travel through life unsighted, grasping only the smallest details of one another’s selves, including our own. Thinking all the while that we can see. ~ Elizabeth Strout, The Things We Never Say

“Oh God! He said he was DTF...we thought that meant down to finance .” Tilly lets out a wallop of a laugh. “DTF...girl, that’s the acronym for down to fuck .” ~ Meghan Quinn, Rules for the Summer

“There comes a point in every marriage when a woman realizes that the man she married is a freak. This is inevitable. It cannot be avoided. The only real question in the matter is what type of freak your husband will be—meaning: if you are lucky, you will find out your husband is preternaturally into vintage children’s train sets, and you will not find out that your husband pays high school cheerleaders for sex. That is the best we homemakers can hope for in this life: a man whose freakishness is not unspeakably violent or technically illegal, and therefore is something we are able to bear.” ~ Caro Claire Burke, Yesteryear

The ocean was a magician, I saw that now. These waves, their rippling crests and troughs, were an illusory trick, a veneer for everything that existed beneath. I had glimpsed that other world, and the one I had been born into was transformed forever. ~ EJ Swift, The Coral Bones

It’s just that we’re destroying the planet for real and no one seems to give a shit — and then something bad happens to one of us, a human being, and it’s “earth-shattering”. ~ Eric Puchner, Dream State

“You are not replaceable,” he said, his hands trembling against her shoulders. “You are not required to make your death convenient. You are allowed to be important to people.” ~ SenLinYu, Alchemised

One afternoon, as I lay on my bed wallowing in self-pity, my mom handed me a thick fantasy book, and when I turned my nose up at it, she told me, “Maggie, you need to live in someone else’s head for a bit.” ~ Ilona Andrews, This Kingdom Will Not Kill Me

“It turns out executing a deliberate, convincing distraction is a lot harder than being a distraction accidentally.” ~ Martha Wells, Platform Decay ( The Murderbot Diaries #8)

Believe the lie — trust the lie — it is the only thing you have. Stay in the cage and paint the walls. If you do not, then you must quit; but if you can delude yourself long enough, then your delusions might very well come true. ~ R.F. Kuang, Katabasis

“When your mama is in heaven there is nothing to stop her from loving you – not a man, not a job, not whatever she wanted to be doing but she had kids instead. When the sun shines, you can feel that pure love on you. It tastes like sugarcane.” ~ Tayari Jones, Kin

“Even at my most fucked up I like to make sense. At least to myself. Don’t you?” ~ Mason Coile (Andrew Pyper), Exiles

We want women like us. Women who present as scary, but have good hearts. Women who know how to get shit done. Women who, despite our age, share a dirty little secret: we’re just getting started. ~ Maria Semple, Go Gentle

“One day we’ll see that our perception of being alone in the world was once humankind’s greatest shared delusion.” ~ Dan Brown, The Secret of Secrets

...the immortal words that flowed forth from mission specialist Jack Vo’s mouth as he became the first human to set foot on this new planet were: What the fuck is that? ~ Becky Chambers, To Be Taught, If Fortunate

“They will not break me. Fuck them all. They will not break me. But I will break them. This is my promise to myself, to my friends, and to you, anyone who reads these words. I will break them all.”   Crawler Carl, 25th Edition of The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook ~ Matt Dinniman, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook ( Dungeon Crawler Carl #3)