Anyone tempted to get to know me is probably making an epoch-shatteringly tragic mistake. Nevertheless, for those who wish to venture beyond the Pillars of Hercules, this’ll tell you the basics about me:

My Favorite Virtue: Wit

My Favorite Qualities In A Man: An indifference to masculinity

My Favorite Qualities In A Woman: Independence and skepticism

My Chief Characteristic: Introversion

What I Appreciate Most In My Friends: Their ability to find something amusing about the strange person they associate with.

Your Main Fault: Absent-Mindedness, combined with a sometimes paralyzing indecisiveness.

Your Favorite Occupation: Daydreaming

Your Idea of Happiness: A sensible, just world and enough money to live in it comfortably. I don’t expect the first, though I harbor hope for the second.

Your Idea of Misery: Ten seconds spent in the company of a dolt.

If Not Yourself, Who Would You Be?: Chris Rock. I’d have loved to have dreamed up the “1 Rib” bit.

Where Would You Like to Live?: New York City.

My Favorite Color and Flower: It’s not the color, or the flower, it’s the arrangement.

My Favorite Prose Authors: Kafka, Turgenev, Barnes, Winterson, Mitchell, Carroll, Nabokov, Heller, Vonnegut, Virginia Woolf, Charles Johnson, Harlan Ellison, Muriel Spark

My Favorite Poets: Cummings, Neruda, Shelley, Ovid

My Favorite Heroes In Fiction: Joseph K., Howard W. Campbell, Jr.

My Favorite Heroines in Fiction: Clarissa Dalloway, Mabel (Pirates of Penzance)

My Favorite Painters and Composers: Rousseau, Seurat, Kahlo, Beethoven, J.S. Bach, Handel, Vivaldi, Mozart, Sondheim

My Heroes In Real Life: Carl Sagan, Medgar Evers

My Heroines in Real Life: Aung San Suu Kyi, Sally Ride

My Heroine in World History: Viola Liuzzo

My Favorite Food and Drink: Tandoori Chicken served with a riesling.

My Favorite Names: Ignatz Farhquar, Decius Quackenbush.

What I Hate the Most: Willful ignorance.

World History Characters I Hate the Most: Adolf Hitler and anyone who served him willingly.

The Military Event I Admire Most: Appomattox, though it should be said that the end of almost any war is the happiest part of it.

The Reform I Admire Most: The Civil Rights Act of 1875, an admirable attempt to ban discrimination in public accommodations like hotels, transportation, housing, and restaurants that, thanks to the Supreme Court of 1883, was rendered unconstitutional until passage, and acceptance of, a nearly identical, and by this time hugely overdue, reform, the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Ninety years of anguish might have been avoided if the Supreme Court had listened to the first Justice Harlan and let the 1875 law stand. I often wonder how race relations would be different now.

The Natural Talent I’d Like to Be Gifted With: The ability to enjoy the company of strangers for more than 37 minutes sans alcohol.

How I Wish To Die: Watching the Sun expand to engulf the Earth.

What is My Present State of Mind: Already starting to think about the next thing I have to do.

For What Fault Have I the Most Toleration?: Sexual Promiscuity

My Favorite Motto: Be careful what you pretend to be, for in the end you are what you pretend to be.

Vanity Fair has a Proust Questionnaire you can try yourself, or you could just leave your own version in comments.