Your favorite virtue: Genius. If that isn’t a virtue (which it isn’t), competence.
Your favorite qualities in a man: Being willing to love something and say so.
Your favorite qualities in a woman: Joyfulness and beauty.
Your chief characteristic: Intellectualism.
What you appreciate the most in your friends: When they teach me something I didn't know.
Your main fault: Impatience.
Your favorite occupation: Writing.
Your idea of happiness: The activity of the soul in conformity with reason. Scriabin’s etude in D sharp minor, (Op. 8 No. 12).
Your idea of misery: The Islamic Republic of Iran.
If not yourself, whom would you be? A drunk, most likely.
Where would you like to live? Orange, Va., or Oahu.
Your favorite color: Chrysler’s 2003 electric blue.
Your favorite flower: Morning glory.
Your favorite bird: Cardinal.
Your favorite prose authors: John Varley, Florence King, Joseph Conrad, Ayn Rand, Thomas Jefferson, Mark Twain, Christopher Hitchens, Max Hastings, Jacob Bronowski, David E. Kelley, Terence Rattigan.
Your favorite poets: Richard Wilbur, A.E. Stallings, Stephen Kampa, E.E. Cummings, Theodore Roethke, Shakespeare, Milton.
Your favorite heroes in fiction: Reepicheep, Cyrano de Bergerac, James T. Kirk, Howard Roark, Dr. Geoffrey Geiger.
Your favorite heroines in fiction: Cirocco Jones, Eve, Dagny Taggart, Antigone, Desdemona, Nora Helmer, Zahra.
Your favorite painters: Sargent, Bouguereau, Hopper, John White Alexander, Paul Jackson, Steven Hanks, Pino Daeni, Gerrit Dou.
Your favorite composers: Scriabin, Chopin, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninov, Jerry Goldsmith, John Fogerty.
Your heroes in real life: Thomas Jefferson, Frederick Douglass, John Quincy Adams, Charles Sumner, Aristotle, Capt. James Cook, Sequoyah, James Madison, Stephen Field, Charles V. Stuart, Jacob Bronowski.
Your favorite heroines in real life: Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
What characters in history do you most dislike: John C. Calhoun, James Buchanan, all dictators.
Your heroines in World history: Ka'ahumanu, Ayn Rand, Lise Meitner, Abigail Adams.
Your favorite food and drink: Greek cuisine. Drink: pina colada.
Your favorite names: I always thought my ancestor Shadrach Daniel Baltzegar Bonnett had a great name.
What I hate the most: Barbarism (by which I mean Durant’s definition: a barbarian is a man content to believe without reasons and live without freedom).
World history characters I hate the most: Slave masters, of whatever party.
The military event I admire the most: Jackson’s victory at New Orleans; Sherman’s March to the Sea; the defeat of the Japanese in World War II.
The reform I admire the most: Separation of church and state.
The natural talent I'd like to be gifted with: Playing the piano, if that’s a “natural” talent. If not, the ability to gauge how others will perceive me.
How I wish to die: Without pain.
What is your present state of mind: Content.
For what fault have you most toleration? Passion.
Your favorite motto: Mais le plus simple; de beaucoup. / J’ai decide d’etre admirable, en tout, pour tout.
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