After a while the middle-aged person who lives in her head begins to talk to her soul, the kid.

More from Anne Lamott

• I just gave up one day. Around the time the news about toxic shock syndrome came out. I thought, Fuck me, man, I give up. Come and get me.
• Mattie sat at the table, obsessing, orbiting around herself. She was sick of her worried, hostile mind. It would have killed her long before, she felt, if it hadn’t needed the transportation.
• Mattie was in love with Daniel, of course; this was the X within the circle on her map: I love Daniel.
• Accept loss forever
• A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves.
• A chief event of life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us.