Sometimes I wonder if all of the awesome stuff that I would have written, given enough time for it to occur to me, has already been done.

Anne Lamott on the importance of a likable narrator:

"Now, a person's faults are largely what make him or her likable. I like for narrators to be like the kind of people I choose for friends, which is to say that they have a lot of the same flaws as I. Preoccupation with self is good, as is a tendency toward procrastination, self-delusion, darkness, jealousy, groveling, greediness, addictiveness."

She goes on to cite an example from a short story by Abigail Thomas:

My mother's first criterion for a man is that he be interesting. What this really means is that he be able to appreciate my mother, whose jokes hinge on some grammatical subtlety or a working knowledge of higher mathematics. You get the picture. Robbie is about as interesting as a pair of red high-top Converse sneakers. But Robbie points to the mattress on the floor. He grins, slowly unbuckling is belt, drops his jeans. "Lie down," says Robbie.

This is interesting enough for me.