There was no one alive who did not contribute his share of mystery to the world.

Sometimes they rose up inside her, these moments of fierce happiness, kindling out of their own substance like a spark igniting a mound of grass. It was a joy to be alive, a strange and savage joy, and she stood there in the warmth and destruction of it knowing it could not last.

There was no one alive who did not contribute his share of mystery to the world.

People who read Anne Lamott, like people who read Anne Rice, believe that tragedy is romantic, but the people who read Anne Lamott believe it ironically.

I had always been the kind of boy who was quick to laugh and quick to cry.

You remember having friends who used to lampoon the world so effortlessly, crouching at the verge of every joke and waiting to pounce on it, and you remember how they changed as they grew older and the joy of questioning everything slowly became transformed into the pain of questioning everything, like a star consuming its own core.

I might not remember how the sky looked on any given day. I do remember, though, what it was like to be a boy beneath a sky.