{"id":24739,"date":"2023-07-07T11:47:21","date_gmt":"2023-07-07T15:47:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/?p=24739"},"modified":"2026-06-24T10:27:58","modified_gmt":"2026-06-24T14:27:58","slug":"more-questions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/encore-des-questions\/","title":{"rendered":"More questions!"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Surely you remember Isabel P., whom I\u2019ve mentioned to you before. It\u2019s the third time we\u2019ve connected, and this time she\u2019s sent me a new list of questions. I agreed to answer again because I think that this young lady has the potential to become a Lisa Laflamme or a Mutsumi Takahashi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 \u201cTell me about your everyday life. What does a day in the life of Cora look like? How do you plan your days? Do you have a writing routine?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 \u201cAs I age, my body has become a creature of habit. Without fail, I wake up at 5 every morning, hobble to my favourite couch in the library and lie down to read. It\u2019s the perfect place to snooze for another hour before getting ready to make my way to the town\u2019s coffee shop to write. When I\u2019m not needed at the head office, I write until 1 p.m., take an afternoon nap on the couch at home and then open my eyes around 3:30. That\u2019s when I start to think about dinner. I turn on the TV at 6 to watch the news to find out what\u2019s going on in the world. I typically turn it off soon after. I get on my stationary bike and pedal to a non-existent destination for an hour while drinking my last coffee of the day. Then I spend an hour or two thinking about new topics I could write about or exploring interesting magazines or books I want to read next.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 \u201cIf you had to choose between wisdom and intelligence, which one would you choose?\u201d
\u2014 \u201cWisdom, definitely, because as I age, I tend to forget everything intelligence has taught me. Wisdom leaves me alone; it\u2019s wise enough to accept me as I am.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 \u201cHow would you describe your ideal self?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 \u201cI don\u2019t know. I\u2019ve just put it in the oven and, once it\u2019s cooked, I\u2019ll be able to scatter its ashes to the wind and see what becomes of it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014What would you choose: to love someone or be loved?\u201c
\u2014I deeply love my grandkids with a love that\u2019s boundless. And I will never lose hope that one day I\u2019ll find a great love. More than anything, I\u2019d like to experience the tremors of a heart in love \u2013 my own or the other\u2019s.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u201cWho decided the order of the alphabet?\u201d
\u2014I don\u2019t know, but I think it\u2019s a job well done. L<\/em>\u2019love <\/em>(love) comes first and it ends with zero. One thing is for sure, I would like to find the\u2019love<\/em> before the end.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014A little bird told me that you never eat breakfast. It\u2019s a bit odd for the Queen of Breakfast. Is it true?\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 \u201cYes, it is! I spent many years concocting the best breakfasts in the world for our many customers. We never had a minute to stop and eat. That\u2019s how my children and I got used to eating around 3 p.m., just before cleaning the kitchen and prepping for the next day. During those days, the orange juice was freshly squeezed for each order and employees weren\u2019t allowed to have any. To this day, I almost never drink orange juice.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 \u201cDo you believe in life after death?\u201d
\u2014 \u201cAbsolutely. If I didn\u2019t believe in it, a while after my wedding, I would have thrown myself off the pier in my hometown of Caplan and the nasty eels would have made a quick meal of me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 I heard through the grapevine that you\u2019ll publish a new book. Is that so?
\u2014 \u201cYes. It\u2019s already written and we are now at the stage of correcting typos and checking a few details here and there with the editor. The title is still a work in progress and it\u2019s scheduled to be published this fall.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 \u201cIf you could choose the way you die, what would you prefer?\u201d
\u2014 \u201cThat\u2019s easy. I would like to go in my sleep, without even noticing that I am changing worlds.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 \u201cWhat would you do if you knew the exact date of your departure?\u201d
\u2014 \u201cMaybe I would count the days like a child counts the days before Christmas. I would mark the calendar squares with a big X in each box.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014\u201cSeriously, Madame Cora, would you say you\u2019ve had a successful life?\u201d
\u2014As much as I could have, I think. I love my last quarter of a century and how I\u2019ve started to write again. I wake up every morning to a new challenge; a dream to tell, a story to tweak. I adore describing the glorious banality of everyday life, and it gives me great satisfaction to help dispel the disenchantment that too many unhappy people feel.\u201c<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2014 \u201cAnd now, my last question. If you had the choice to invite anyone in the world over for dinner, who would it be?\u201d
\u2014 \u201cIt would be an absolute pleasure for me to invite Tenzin Gyatso, the fourteenth Dalai Lama, and his friend, Matthieu Ricard, both 87 years old. My hopeful heart would wait for an affirmative reply.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cora
\ud83d\udcdd\ud83d\udd0f<\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Surely you remember Isabel P., whom I\u2019ve mentioned to you before. It\u2019s the third time we\u2019ve connected, and this time she\u2019s sent me a new list of questions. I agreed to answer again because I think that this young lady has the potential to become a Lisa Laflamme or a Mutsumi Takahashi. \u2014 \u201cTell me about your everyday life. What does a day in the life of Cora look like? How do you plan your days? Do you have a writing routine?\u201d \u2014 \u201cAs I age, my body has become a creature of habit. Without fail, I wake up at 5 every morning, hobble to my favourite couch in the library and lie down to read. It\u2019s the perfect place to snooze for another hour before getting ready to make my way to the town\u2019s coffee shop to write. When I\u2019m not needed at the head office, I write until 1 p.m., take an afternoon nap on the couch at home and then open my eyes around 3:30. That\u2019s when I start to think about dinner. I turn on the TV at 6 to watch the news to find out what\u2019s going on in the world. I typically turn it off soon after. I get on my stationary bike and pedal to a non-existent destination for an hour while drinking my last coffee of the day. Then I spend an hour or two thinking about new topics I could write about or exploring interesting magazines or books I want to read next.\u201d \u2014 \u201cIf you had to choose between wisdom and intelligence, which one would you choose?\u201d\u2014 \u201cWisdom, definitely, because as I age, I tend to forget everything intelligence has taught me. Wisdom leaves me alone; it\u2019s wise enough to accept me as I am.\u201d \u2014 \u201cHow would you describe\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":414,"featured_media":24744,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"Pour la troisi\u00e8me fois, dame Isabel P. questionne Mme Cora, qui accepte encore de r\u00e9pondre et de se livrer un peu plus.","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_seopress_news_disabled":"","_seopress_video_disabled":"","_seopress_video":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas_manual":[],"_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable_all":"","_seopress_pro_rich_snippets_disable":[],"_seopress_pro_schemas":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[42],"class_list":["post-24739","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lettre-mme-cora"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24739","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/414"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24739"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24739\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chezcora.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24739"}],"curies":[{"name":"WP","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}