1.) What speaks to your soul?
Pop music. Thankfully my soul is a bad listener.
2.) What is your favorite time of day? Why?
Night. It reminds me that everything ends (and that in this lies consolation)
3.) What do you obsess over?
My relative poverty. My absolute ignorance.
4.) What could you never have too many of?
Empty pocket notebooks.
5.) What is your favorite smell?
Half-burnt turkey (seriously)
6.) What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Being seated at a dinner table with garrulous relatives around me.
7.) What's playing on your stereo?
Don't have a stereo but I've got "The Essential Leonard Cohen” playing in the background.
8.) What is your most marked characteristic?
Unremitting pessimism. The tendency to (as the saying goes) "look around for a coffin when I smell flowers".
9.) What inspires you?
The thought that someday if I work hard enough, I could have my own private Romanian castle, my own little army of indentured servants to do my bidding.
10.) Can't leave home without?
My personal digital assistant and an SD card full of magazine articles to read on the train.
11.) What is your idea of earthly happiness?
A quiet room with a locked door.
12.) To what weaknesses are you most indulgent?
Watching bad movies.
13.) What books are on your nightstand?
On the coffee table by the couch lies Germaine Greer's “The Whole Woman”, sullen and unread. On the surrounding carpet, in artless piles, books I do not recognise and cannot remember buying.
14.) What is your favorite virtue?
Self-righteousness (it's a virtue where I come from)
15.) A famous writer said that you should always be in search of something-an object, a raincoat, anything. What do you find yourself in search of most often?
The TV remote.
16.) What is your principle defect?
A persistent failure to empathise, to fraternise, to smile when socially appropriate.
17.) What do you value most in your friends?
Their nonexistence.
18.) Who is are your favorite artists?
I have no favourites. I wish I did.
19.) What quality do you most admire in a man?
Cultural literacy
20.) What quality do you most admire in a woman?
Immoderate wit and intelligence.
21.) Top six places in the world you would like to visit?
Rome, Reykjavik, Tokyo, Beijing, Bombay and New York (but not in that order)
22.) Michael Crichton said in his book Travels, that at thirty-something he had already accomplished everything he had ever dreamed of and more. Do you feel like that you have accomplished all you have dreamed about or do you feel like you have much more to accomplish? Where do you feel you are on the your path?
I lost the path in the darkness of Youth and wandered off into the wilderness. Now, warm by a campfire and several hundred miles from civilisation, I have forgotten that a path even exists.
23.) What are your top three dreams of accomplishing/becoming?
To write a book that many will buy, no one will read, and everyone will praise.
To build my own Fortress of Solitude and live the rest of my days within it with my broadband internet connection and yearning heart.
To join the Conversation, in my own time and on my own terms.
24.) What is your guilty pleasure?
Trawling through Amazon.com in the wee hours of the morning ordering books I never get round to reading.
25.) Do you play it safe or take chances more often?
Play it safe. Walking on the wild side has never appealed to me
26.) Do you make your bed everyday?
I sleep on a couch (and have been doing so for a few months now). I am not a bed-making person.
27.) What are you seeking?
I seek a way out of the maze, a warm patch in a cold world, at a distance from those who have come to know me.
28.) Most unforgettable experience?
I am told I almost died once- but details of this incident escape me. I am, you see, incredibly skilled at forgetting.
29.) How often do you search for freshness and inspiration?
When I feel compelled to: When the greyness becomes overwhelming.
30.) Favorite item of clothing?
My brown military jacket - slightly worn, reasonably comfortable, and inexplicably reassuring.
31.) What is your greatest fear?
I have for so long pretended not to see, and fear that I will wake up one morning and discover I am blind.
32.) What is your favorite journey?
The walk home from the Tube Station. Shutting the door and feeling the rest of the world recede.
33.) On what occasions do you lie?
When I see no compelling reason to tell the truth. Frequently.
34.) What is your greatest regret?
That I failed to put the energies of youth to good use.
35.) How do you tell time?
By the digital clock in the corner of my Windows desktop.
36.) What is it that you most dislike?
Myself, in the mirror. The person I have become.
37.) What is your motto?
Onward, through the fog.
