What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Living in a land without music.
Where would you like to live?
I would like to live among friends and books in a small house with a large garden in San Francisco.
What is your idea of earthly happiness?
Dancing to "Fear of Music."
To what faults do you feel most indulgent?
Loving too much. Overdoing the life of the mind.
Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
The Chinese brother who swallowed the sea. Toru Watanabe. Vautrin. Orlando.
Who are your favorite characters in history?
Zhuangzi. Picasso. Coleridge. Balzac. Tolstoy. Thoreau. Gandhi.
Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
Marcella, Julia, Madhur.
Who are your favorite heroines of fiction?
Certainly not Alice or any of Austen's or Dickens's females.
Your favorite painter?
Hans Bol.
Your favorite musician?
Joni Mitchell. Also Dawn Upshaw, Sviatoslav Richter, Thelonious Monk, Nathan Milstein, Randy Newman, Stan Getz, Johnny Hodges, Georges Brassens.
The quality you most admire in a man?
Originality. Also kindness.
The quality you most admire in a woman?
Kindness. Also social ease, tact and utter lack of vulgarity.
Your favorite virtue?
Courage.
Your favorite occupation?
Walking the streets of big cities, humming to myself, catching flattering reflections of myself in passing shop windows.
Who would you have liked to be?
The Kangxi emperor. Thoreau. Marcus Aurelius. Escoffier. But I am very happy being myself.
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