I attempt the famous Proust questionnaire.
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What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery? 10:15 Saturday night. Almost as bad: the dumb horror of looking around a tableful of intimates and realizing they don’t care as much as I do.
Where would you like to live? In a place where some of my desires ungratified at least face the possibility of gratification, and if not, then at least in a state where I can reside comfortably between contradictions.
What is your idea of earthly happiness? Any place with a sturdy table, generous availability of liquor, and any number of loquacious characters seducing me with offhand wit, defenses of terrible albums and movies, and acknowledgments – implicit or otherwise – that I’ve changed their minds.
To what faults do you feel most indulgent? Gossiping about people for the sake of a well-turned phrase. Brazenness when it’s for the sake of conversational intimacy.
Who are your favorite heroes of fiction? Lucien de Rubempre, Leopold Bloom, Hans Castorp, Nathan Zuckerman, Michael Henchard, Moses Herzog.
Who are your favorite heroes of history? Henry Adams, Abraham Lincoln, Oscar Wilde, Aaron Burr as conceived by Gore Vidal.
Who are your favorite heroines of fiction? Isabel Archer, Gwendolyn Harleth, Anne Elliot, Mrs. Ramsay, Lily Bart, Ursula Branwen.
Your favorite painter? I have no talent for analyzing the interplay of oils on canvas, but I can discuss Caravaggio’s boys and Mondigliani’s women fairly intelligently.
Your favorite musician? Prince. My favorite singers: Chrissie Hynde, Bryan Ferry, Dusty Springfield.
The quality you most admire in a man? An ironic sense, and the ability to think like a woman.
The quality you most admire in a woman? An ironic sense. The ability to think like a man.
Your favorite virtue? Self-restraint.
Your favorite occupation? Writing at home, reading on the bus, and getting chauffeured to a bar to meet friends.
Your most marked characteristic? A curiosity that borders on aggression.
What is your principle defect? Languor when confronted by intense emotion.
What natural gift would you most like to possess? Sexual magnetism detached from physique.
What historical and contemporary figures do you most despise? Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, most newspaper op-ed columnists, Che Guevara, Dick Cheney.
What are your favorite names? Gabriel, Otto, Lisandra.
What is your present state of mind? Restless, as ever.
What is your motto? I’m not one for pretty maxims, but the first two lines of Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Man” have proved useful over the years: “Know then thyself, presume not God to scan/The proper study of mankind is man.” Then the ironical sense I admire so most draws a mustache on those verses at poem’s end: mankind is “the glory, jest, and riddle of the world.”
How would you like to die? Remembered as a much better man than I am.
Humanizing The Vacuum 
I love this questionnaire! Can I steal the questions???
Sure! Vanity Fair publishes it every month.
I’ve loved the Proust Questionnairre for years, but I’d never thought of doing it myself. I might have to. And what a perfect answer to the last question! You should somehow find yourself in Ontario (or I should find myself in Miami) soon, sir.