Sometimes when you're reading...

...things just jump out at you. For example, from Jennifer Stevenson's Trash Sex Magic:

Her story was full of strange things. As they walked he looked around him, wherever she pointed, to the places where this or that miracle had occurred to her, and he realized how wrongheaded had been his years of careful self-blinding. Really, he was nearly as bad as King. In the middle of this poor life, we are surrounded by mystery, and the pity of it is that we would rather just be poor. No real tolerance for mystery at all.

But the whole novel is good—I thought my novel was a phantasmagorical swamp until I started on this one.