Zitat des Tages von Ben Schott:
I spend a lot of time looking at rococo books. And almanacs used to be huge sellers - they were pretty much part of the fabric of life. I thought, this is bizarre, I'd love to buy a book like this, and there isn't one. So I thought, all right then, this could be fun. I'll write an almanac.
I read the papers online, and something usually piques my curiosity - that will then be the baseline of my research for the day.
If I'm researching something strange and rococo, I'll go to the London Library or the British Library and look it up in books.
For me, writing is like being taken on a walk by a footnote: It's amazing where you end up.
The radio's pretty much always on, and I also listen to some American podcasts, such as for 'National Public Radio' and 'Newsweek'.
The web can be a fast trip to the library, giving you immediate access to a government report, or it can filter media for you, which is why I look at around 15- 20 of these sites every day.
I have the luxury of getting up quite late, so I hardly ever set an alarm clock.
I'm very fond of an old map of London that used to belong to my father. I'm a big London fan, and the evolution of the city is astonishing, when you look back to Pepys and how small it was - everyone knew each other.
Writing 'Schottenfreude' has reinforced the fact that there are few, if any, emotions that have not been experienced, and analyzed, by some of the world's greatest writers.
I have always loved the fluidity of language - delighting in dialects, dictionaries, slang and neologisms.
