She wears latex bicycle shorts nearly every day, and I will tell you why: because she can. I consider it an act of aggression against the rest of us … - Anne Lamott

Maybe, I thought, after a few months of sobriety, you could successfully smoke marijuana again, or maybe every anniversary you got to have one glass of a perfectly chilled California Chardonnay.

At five that night, I went back to the market and bought three sixteen-ounce Rainier Ales. I bounced back to my house, Mary Lou Retton-like, sipped the first ale, took the Valium, smoked a joint, drank the second ale, took another Valium, listened to “Into the Mystic” ten times, drank the third Ale, too the Valium and the Halcion, and discovered two unhappy thoughts. One was it was only seven o’clock. The second was that I was wide awake.

If you are mesmerized by televised stupidity, and don't get to hear or read stories about your world, you can be fooled into thinking that the world isn't miraculous — and it is.