The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“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