More Than You Want to Know

In the back pages of Vanity Fair each month, readers find The Proust Questionnaire.  This is a series of questions posed to famous subjects about their lives, thoughts, values and experiences. These are my answers to those questions.

What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Seeking nothing.

What is your greatest fear?
Fear.

What historical figure do you most identify with?
God.

Which living person do you most admire?
All of them.  Everyone has something to offer, even the most hardened of criminals, the most seemingly deplorable of people.

What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?
The need for constant change.  This is also the trait I most admire.

What trait do you most deplore in others?
The ability to hate.

What is your greatest extravagance?
Food and wine.

On what occasion do you lie?
All of them.

What do you most dislike about your appearance?
A very small 1mm diameter mole on my inner thigh.

What is your favorite journey?
Life.

What do you consider the most overrated virtue?
Chastity and Faith.

Which living person do you most despise?
None.  I kill all people I despise.

Which words or phrases do you most overuse?
The.

What is your greatest regret?
Things I have not.

What or who is the greatest love of your life?
Experience.

When and where were you happiest?
When doing something new.

Which talent would you most like to have?
I think it would be fun to stick my fist in my mouth.  It’s a great party trick.

What is your current state of mind?
Appreciative.

If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
The desire to change something.

If you could change one thing about your family, what would it be?
The desire to change nothing.

If you were to die and come back as a person or thing, what would it be?
Dead.

If you could choose what or who to come back as, what would it be?
Alive.

What do your consider your greatest achievement?
This.

What is your most treasured possession?
My mind.

What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Meatloaf.  Not the musician.

What is your most marked characteristic?
Intensity.

What is the quality you most like in a man?
Contradictions.

What is the quality you most admire in a woman?
Consistency.

What do you most value in your friends?
Time.

Who are your favorite writers?
William Goldman.

Who is your favourite hero of fiction?
Jerry Seinfeld, Elizabeth Bennett.

Who are your heroes in real life?
Anyone who rescues me from death.

What are your favourite names?
I don’t have favorite names.  If I had favorite names, I might be tempted to have children to give them to.

What is it that you most dislike?
Children.

How would you like to die?
I wouldn’t.

What is your motto?
Go.  Do.  Take action.