[John Ames, the narrator from the book, is speaking.] I passed two young fellows on the street the other day. I know who they are, they work at the garage. They're not churchgoing, neither one of them, just decent rascally young fellows who have to be joking all the time, and there they were, propped against the garage wall in the sunshine, lighting up their cigarettes. They're always so black with grease and string with gasoline I don't why they don't catch fire themselves. They were passing remarks back and forth the way they do and laughing that wicked way they have. And it seemed beautiful to me. It's an amazing thing to watch people laugh, the way it sort of takes them over. Sometimes they really do struggle with it. I see that in church often enough. So I wonder where it is and where it comes from, and I wonder what it expends out of your system, so that you have to do it till you're done, like crying in a way, I suppose, except laughter is much more easily spent.

Marilynne Robinson, Gilead