| 1. What is your greatest fear? |
Fear itself. |
| 2. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself? |
Imperiousness, followed too closely by laziness |
| 3. What is your greatest extravagance? |
Wasting time, which is also my greates necessity; also, the occasional
jewel |
| 4. What is your favorite journey? |
Perhaps the early-morning taxi drive into Paris after a night flight across
the Atlantic, with good coffee, bread and jam, and a friend all waiting;
the anticipation, the amused pleasure of it, for the drive itself is ugly. |
| 5. What do you consider the most overrated virtue? |
female niceness |
| 6. What do you dislke most about your appearance? |
Frowning; apparent confusion |
| 7. Which living person do you most despise? |
Any trimmer |
| 8. Which words or phrases do you most overuse? |
"Jeepers." "Wow." "Cool." |
| 9. What or who is the greatest love of your live? |
I look back and say 'so far,' for who can know what the future will bring?
He died. |
| 10. Who is your favorite hero of fiction? |
There are several, if heroes they are: The Karamazov brothers (even Dmitri!),
Father Zosima. Jo March, of course. |
| 11. What do you consider your greatest achievement? |
Oh, perhaps I haven't reached it yet? |
| 12. What is your most treasured possession? |
Solitude. |
| 13. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? |
The twentieth century contained it. After those horrors, I cannot use the
word personally, it is trivial. |
| 14. Where would you like to live? |
On the Place des Vosges, in the moonlight. |
| 15. Who are your favorite writers? |
If I had favorites, the first would be Kleist. I think often about Haldor
Laxness. |
| 16. Who are your heroes in real life? |
I admire many people but am wary of heroes, for in the first instance
they were warriors beloved of the gods. We are not now at war, so far as
I know.
An English prelate and poet named Beilby Proteus wrote in the eighteenth
century: "One murder made a villain,/ Millions a hero. Princes were
priveleged/ To kill, and numbers sanctified the crime." This is not
cynicism, I think, but near-despair at human folly. He also wrote: "War
its thousands slays, Peace its ten thousands." This is worth remembering. |
| 17. How would you like to die? |
In the snow, in the Far North, alone. |
| 18. What is your motto? |
"Know where the exits are." No: "Do your best." |
| 19. What is it that you most dislike? |
Cant |
| 20. What is your greatest regret? |
Lack of kindness of my part |
| 21. If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what do you
think it would be? |
I do not like to imagine it; something dark, I fear. |
Interests 