Interior Design

In the end, a house is not merely a structure of brick and timber, but a silent witness to the private revolutions of the soul. The rooms we inhabit become the stage for our quiet victories and defeats, the walls absorbing the echoes of our ambitions and our despairs. To live well is to choose one's confines with the same care as one chooses one's words. The ideal of beauty in dwelling is not luxury for its own sake, but the deliberate pursuit of an environment that sharpens the mind and soothes the spirit.

The end goal is not mere shelter, but a setting for the mind's highest labors and the heart's rarest joys. I would have:

• Luxurious mansions in McLean, Virginia—where the air is thick with the hush of old money and the lawns roll out like green carpets to the horizon.
• Large estates in Massachusetts, where the winters are long and the libraries deep, and the architecture stands as a rebuke to the passing of time.
• Above all, a top-floor residence on Broadway in San Francisco, where the city's pulse is felt through the glass, and the fog drifts in like a half-remembered dream.

These are not mere addresses, but ideals—each a fortress for the intellect, a sanctuary for the senses.

The interiors I desire are not gaudy with excess, but composed with the severity of a well-edited sentence. I would have:

• A grand piano, black and silent until the hour demands music, standing as a monument to discipline and beauty.
• Architectural libraries built into the very bones of the house—shelves hidden within walls, books as insulation against the world's noise.
• Light that falls in deliberate patterns, illuminating thought and shadow alike.
• Spaces for solitude, for conversation, for the slow accumulation of wisdom.

The house is not a display, but a tool—a means to cultivate the self, to resist the vulgarity of the age.