The Saucy Wenches Book Club

“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

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

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

... It’s about learning to live in partnership with one another in small communities, and at the same time, working out a sustainable partnership with our environment. It’s about treating education and adaptability as the absolute essentials that they are. ~ Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

“You can’t crush ideas by suppressing them. You can only crush them by ignoring them. By refusing to think, refusing to change.” ~ Ursula K. Leguin, The Dispossessed

It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. ~ George Orwell, 1984

And all the lives we ever lived and all the lives to be are full of trees and changing leaves. ~ Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

All struggles Are essentially power struggles. Who will rule, Who will lead, Who will define, refine, confine, design, Who will dominate. All struggles Are essentially power struggles, And most are no more intellectual than two rams knocking their heads together. ~ Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.” ~ Ursula K. Leguin, The Dispossessed

Cultural shock was nothing much compared to the biological shock I suffered as a human male among human beings who were, five-sixths of the time, hermaphroditic neuters. ~ Ursula K LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

“If you can see a thing whole,” he said, “it seems that it’s always beautiful. Planets, lives. . . . But close up, a world’s all dirt and rocks. And day to day, life’s a hard job, you get tired, you lose the pattern. You need distance, interval. The way to see how beautiful the earth is, is to see it as the moon. The way to see how beautiful life is, is from the vantage point of death.” ~ Ursula K. Leguin, The Dispossessed

“They have no power to improve their lives, but they have the power to make others even more miserable. And the only way to prove to yourself that you have power is to use it.” ~ Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

It is a terrible thing, this kindness that human beings do not lose. Terrible, because when we are finally naked in the dark and cold, it is all we have. We who are so rich, so full of strength, we end up with that small change. We have nothing else to give. ~ Ursula K LeGuin, The Left Hand of Darkness

If civilization has an opposite, it is war. Of those two things, you have either one, or the other. Not both. ~ Ursula K Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness

Choose your leaders with wisdom and forethought. To be led by a coward is to be controlled by all that the coward fears. To be led by a fool is to be led by the opportunists who control the fool. To be led by a thief is to offer up your most precious treasures to be stolen. To be led by a liar is to ask to be told lies. To be led by a tyrant is to sell yourself and those you love into slavery. ~ Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Talents

“I refuse to ‘look up.’ Optimism nauseates me. It is perverse. Since man’s fall, his proper position in the universe has been one of misery.” “I ain’t miserable.” “You are.” “No, I ain’t.” “Yes, you are.” ~ John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need. ~ Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

People do not get “heavy” with wisdom. They get light. The wiser you become, the lighter you become. This is an unsolicited testimonial for lightheartedness... ~ Tom Robbins, Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

“So I preached from Luke, chapter eighteen, verses one through eight: the parable of the importunate widow. It’s one I’ve always liked. A widow is so persistent in her demands for justice that she overcomes the resistance of a judge who fears neither God nor man. She wears him down. Moral: The weak can overcome the strong if the weak persist. Persisting isn’t always safe, but it’s often necessary.” ~ Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower

“Then you must begin a reading program immediately so that you may understand the crises of our age ... Begin with the late Romans, including Boethius, of course. Then you should dip rather extensively into early Medieval. You may skip the Renaissance and the Enlightenment. That is mostly dangerous propaganda. Now that I think of it, you had better skip the Romantics and the Victorians, too. For the contemporary period, you should study some selected comic books ... I recommend Batman especially, for he tends to transcend the abysmal society in which he’s found himself.” ~ John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces