Véronique Ovaldé

Véronique Ovaldé

1. When were you happiest?

When I let myself off the leash.

2. What is your principal defect?

Melancholy

3. What makes you depressed?

Flowers that fade, people who die, failed books, pallid neon light, my faltering memory, buildings that are destroyed and leave behind – exposed to the world – nothing except the back wall covered with wallpaper which no is longer decorating anything.

4. What do you most dislike about your appearance?

So many things that I can say nothing.

5. What is your favourite word?

Legitimacy.

6. What is your most unappealing habit?

I bite my nails and fingers.

7. What is your favourite smell?

The warm smell of the sun in the nape of my daughter’s neck.

8. What is your guiltiest pleasure?

Chocolat, chocolat, chocolat!

9. Who are your favourite writers?

Lobo Antunes, Bolano, Brautigan

10. What is the worst job you've done?

Making hamburgers when I was sixteen (I’ve never been able to eat one since).

11. When did you last cry, and why?

Yesterday. Existence is a nasty madame…

12. What do you most value in you friends?

Reliability

13. What gift would you most like to possess?

I don’t know.

14. What was your most embarrassing moment?

When I talk nonsense, when I no longer know what I say, when I don’t know the person in front of me to whom I’m supposed to be dedicating a book, when I hurt someone either inadvertently and/or through negligence.

15. What is your most treasured possession?

My child.

16. What is the worst thing anyone's said to you?

You’re only a writer (I still don’t know quite what that meant, but it was supposed to be something very vicious).

17. If you could edit your past, what would you change?

My childhood.

18. If you could go back in time, where would you go?

1959. To prevent my mother from marrying my father.

19. What is your greatest fear?

The loss of the people I love.

20. What is the most important lesson life has taught you?

There’s no worse tyrant than one which approaches in digusise.