The Saucy Wenches Book Club

Carl: Christ. Is the whole universe filled with assholes? Mordecai: Just the ones with the money. ~ Matt Dinniman, The Gate of the Feral Gods

Do you have any idea how much energy it takes to open an aperture in time and space, how much water it takes to keep the computing systems from frying themselves? ~ Ellery Lloyd, Time to Burn

“Poke around in murky waters, and things will rise to the surface. Truth is buoyant.” ~ Hernan Diaz, Ply

“To love a human, to fall for a human, there’s nothing like it. It’s risky, yes. But to risk is to hope, and without hope, well, we are done as a species.” He waved in the general direction of the cantina and shook his head. “A robot ... that is giving up. You’re too young to give up. I can’t let you do it.” ~ Deb Olin Unferth, Earth 7

Come the first of October, no matter the weather, day of the week, or physical condition of the cadets, so long as they have reached the age of twenty, the first-years of Basgiath War College’s Riders Quadrant walk into the forest in hopes of being chosen as a bonded rider by a dragon of the Empyrean. We call this monumental event Threshing . ~ Rebecca Yarros, Threshing Day

She let him know, in no uncertain terms, what she thought of his loyalty to a government that prioritized its own greatness over the well-being of its people — but her disapproval only fueled his. ~ Lily Brooks-Dalton, Ruins

“Friends are like oxygen. If you’ve been blessed enough to have always been surrounded by friends, you might think I’m overplaying this. I don’t blame you. If you’d always been surrounded by air, you wouldn’t think to credit it for your very existence either. But I’ve spent much of my life gasping for breath, so I promise you, it’s true. Friends are like oxygen.” ~ Sally Hepworth, Mad Mabel

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.... 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

“For everyone who looks around and sees only darkness, let them watch you burn and light the way” ~ Penn Cole, Burn of the Everflame

But she is learning to let others think of her what they will. She is learning to keep secrets. And in the dark soil of her silence, she is gathering bits of knowledge like seed, planting them deep. ~ Ariel Lawhon, The Pirate Queen

“They have hollow bones,” Mama explained. “It’s what makes birds so fragile. But it’s also what makes it possible to fly.” ~ Jodi Picoult, Hollow Bones

“I think if you live long enough,” Nico said, “you become a migrant from another timeline. There’s the world you learn to navigate as you enter adulthood, and then that world slips away from you by degrees, and after a while there’s nothing left of it, but you’re still here. That’s what I mean.” ~ Emily St. John Mandel, Exit Party

“You listen to me, young lady. This is your problem! This has always been your problem! You think kindness is some silly frivolous side virtue, when it is in fact the whole damn thing!” ~ Caro Claire Burke, Yesteryear

This whole floor is a racist political cartoon, telling the universe how shifty the Krakaren and the Plenty are. Borant has been very vocal about this for a while now. They say the Plenty are selling everybody this technology just so everybody will become addicted to it. But one day they will take it all away, and that will, somehow, allow their overlord, the Krakaren, to I don’t know, absorb the entire universe. ~ Matt Dinniman, The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook ( Dungeon Crawler Carl #3)

“It caught me sometimes: that this was okay. Just this. That simple beauty was still bearable barely, and that if I lived moment to moment, garden to stove to the simple act of flying, I could have peace.” ~ Peter Heller, The Dog Stars

“People shouldn’t have to be afraid, Adam. Of anything. The universe is vast and terrifying and unthinkably dangerous and you deserve to be protected. To be kept safe and sound. Because otherwise those terrible things rule you and fear rules you and you can’t be who you really are. Freedom means no fear.” ~ qntm/Sam Hughes, There Is No Antimemetics Division

“Just because Eve gave Adam the apple? The man was probably hungry. The woman was always in charge of organizing the fucking snacks.” ~ Liane Moriarty, Big Little Truths

I read, which I suspect is the reason I’m still alive and writing all this down. Only now, after rereading the same thirty or so beat-up paperbacks over and over — what few I could carry into this hole in the wall while I waited for the world to end — do I realize how much I miss it. How much I need the stories. The words. ~ W.H. Chizmar, Them

“It is classic human error,” Gloria said, “to disregard what we cannot see. But the continuation of life on this planet, just like its beginning, depends on relationships. No organism can function — or be understood — alone. Everywhere, life tangles.” ~ Chloe Benjamin, Under Story

“What kind of kingdom had I woken to, where the privilege to exist was not guaranteed but granted, perhaps by those most unfit to bestow it?” ~ Rachel Gillig, The Knave and the Moon

“Son, you’ve become a permanent affliction. Like plaque psoriasis, or pubic rot.” “Mom would raise hell if she heard you talk like that.” “Her suffering is over, thank God. Mine isn’t.” ~ Carl Hiaasen, Fever Beach

They came for you, she says. They came and they died. And you don’t know how to feel about that. Or you’re feeling many things right now. All these things that humans love to write poems about. Have you ever listened to a poem? That’s how humans really sing, isn’t it? ~ Paul Yoon, Etna

Wynn thought that if wolves sang, and coyotes, and elk and birds, and wind, and we, too, it was probably in response to a music we didn’t know we could hear. ~ Peter Heller, The River

“Lionesses. Us. Can’t you just see it Ellie? Someday, you and me — we’ll do great things. We’ll live life for ourselves. And we will help others. We are cubs now, maybe. But we will grow to be lionesses. Strong women who will make things happen.” ~ Marjan Kamali, The Lion Women of Tehran

“I think he got dicked by the dangling dong of destiny, that’s what I think.” ~ Sally Hepworth, Mad Mabel

Don said, “You never believed in fate.” Rodney snorted. “No. You and me? We weren’t destined to be. We’re here because we worked for it. We worked hard. We survived some of the worst things people can live through. It’s not fate. It was you and me who did it. No one and nothing else.” ~ T.J. Klune, We Burned So Bright

“You need to be someone worth falling in love with — you teach them how to love you by showing them who you are.” ~ Rufi Thorpe, Margo’s Got Money Troubles

“People are art,” he said. “It’s enough to just watch the people.” ~ Ann Patchett, Whistler

Once, she heard a guy refer to her as “sex on a stick,” and although she actually had no idea what that meant, she understood it to be a superpower. ~ Jenny Jackson, The Shampoo Effect

All that matters is that he does care and that he wants Charlie to know it. He never wants Charlie to doubt it. Maybe that’s the trick to relationships — with friends or lovers or colleagues who become something like family. ~ Cat Sebastian, Star Shipped

It was the most important day of my life. The day I stopped working on my husband, my farm, my family, and returned to work on an old, beloved project: myself. I walked back inside to make dinner for my family. After dinner, I knocked myself up again. ~ Caro Claire Burke, Yesteryear

The prime directive of all living beings is simple — do what you must — but only the wicked do what they can. ~ W.H. Chizmar, Them

And I wonder how I ever believed not falling in love with this male was an option. How I ever believed I was capable of pulling myself from his atmosphere. ~ Sarah A. Parker, The Ballad of Falling Dragons

There was something about him slightly more suggestible than other children, a thinness between the world he lived in and the world of stories. Not entirely unexpected of a child of two people devoted to books. ~ Daniel Mason, Country People

Mostly, Mad just didn’t like feeling any more uncomfortable than she already would be, filing into a huge arena to watch a sport that, truth be told, she didn’t exactly comprehend. But they were here, right? This is what a family did. They showed up for things they didn’t totally understand and wore uncomfortable clothes and they shouted your name nonstop because they wanted you to understand that, win or lose, they loved you. ~ Kevin Wilson, Run for the Hills

—Not a preamble. A beginning. And it’s too late now to make a difference to the outcome. All we can do is choose who we will save. —And let everyone else go hang? She smiled at me, a tight little smile. —Or save no one at all. ~ Jessie Greengrass, The High House

“A Dirty Shirley,” I said. “Yeah, I want to try that one.” “Cats don’t drink cocktails,” I said. “Cats don’t shoot lasers from their eyes, either, but here we are, Carl. Mama needs a night off.” ~ Matt Dinniman, Carl’s Doomsday Scenario

“Well, I believe we’re all one. Same consciousness of awareness or whatever you want to call it. The universe is expanding now but soon — in a few more billion years — we’ll start shrinking back again to what we were before the Big Bang. We’ll get smaller and smaller and then for a moment we’ll be a tiny speck. After that they say we’ll be nothing — we won’t exist inside a black hole. Then there’ll be another bang and we’ll return....” “I have loved you all my life,” I whisper. “See you after the next bang.” ~ Lily King, Heart the Lover

She didn’t want Lee Turner to kiss her, or marry her, or fall in love with her. She wanted him to sit beside her on this porch and watch the stars with her for as long as she was still alive. She wanted to exist beside him, to be real and whole in someone else’s eyes, to bare her soul to someone and have them stay beside her anyway. ~ Kylie Lee Baker, Japanese Gothic

“Shove that shit down. So deep down it’s out of sight. Don’t spend another moment on it. Make it go from a reality to a memory to a feeling you sometimes get on winter days. Then let that feeling drive you to do somethin’ great.” ~ Madeline Cash, Lost Lambs

This happens all the time. People always think the third margarita is a good idea, and they’re always wrong. ~ Elin Hildebrand, The Five-Star Weekend

I told her I had not unpacked my swim trunks, as I had just arrived. “Oh, go without,” she said, waving away my worries. “It’s more satisfying to swim in the nude. Are you concerned about this old lady seeing something? Don’t concern yourself. I am completely blind!” She stepped close to a painting and, with a delicate pinch of her forefinger and thumb, removed a single hair. A brisk smile at me. She was not blind in the least. ~ Andrew Sean Greer, Villa Coco

“And it sneaks up on me – this sensation. A sensation of deepest comfort. Here we are, doing small things, nothing really, just talking, watching television. And yet in the nothingness there is a life more real than any wedding or christening or birthday party. In these tiny moments, when the spectacle is stripped away, when there is no reason for the day, what’s left appears to be something true, something fundamental to being a person.” ~ Ben Reeves, Everything was Beautiful and Nothing Hurt

It strikes me that, with all the cruelties in this world, there is still nothing quite as dangerous as kindness. ~ Sally Hepworth, Mad Mabel

But no one’s looking at their phones anymore. Not really. It’s like it took the end of the world for people to look up and see each other. ~ T.J. Klune, We Burned So Bright

“I had in my hands the most precious of treasures, a spring from which to drink the knowledge of that world to which I would never have access.” ~ Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

After I’m finished peeing, I stand up straight, close my eyes, organize my thoughts, and click my heels together three times. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. There’s no place like home. I throw the [outhouse] door open and say, “Shit.” ~ Caro Claire Burke, Yesteryear

“My entire life’s assignment is to ask questions. Why else are we even here?” ~ Kathryn Stockett, The Calamity 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