The Proust Questionnaire

I have read it for some time now, how long I could not say.  I refer, of course, to The Proust Questionnaire that ends each issue of Vanity Fair.  Here for your amusement, I offer my answers.  Please feel free to cut and paste the questionnaire into your own blog, onto the book of faces, or wherever you might want to amuse those around you.

1. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

Great food, good wine, and someone nice to look at on the other side of the table; with no thoughts of a workday ahead.

2. What is your greatest fear?

Making someone ill with my cooking.

3. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

Willful ignorance.

4. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

Impatience with others.

5. What is your greatest extravagance?

Great steak.

6. What is your current state of mind?

Reflective.

7. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

Temperance 

8. On what occasion do you lie?

When I think it might protect someones feelings.

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

Confidence.

10. What is the quality you most like in a woman?

Confidence.

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

A chef.  At least, that is my hope.

12. What words or phrases do you most overuse?

"Indeed" and "It would seem."

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

Books.

14. When and where were you happiest?

Paris, 1993.

15. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

Not yet applicable.

16. Where would you like to live?

Paris, France.

17. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? 

Being stuck in a windstorm.

18. What is your most marked characteristic?

My capacity for forgiveness.

19. What do you most value in your friends?

Wit, compassion and intelligence.

20. Who are your favorite writers?

Shakespeare, Tolkien, and some of the old Greeks.

21. Who are your heroes in real life?

Gandhi, Malcolm X, King, teachers (generally).

22. What is your greatest regret?

Not telling the people I love often enough how I feel.

23. What is your motto?

One never knows what the future holds.

24. How would you like to die?

Standing up.