When his wife had job offers in New York and Los Angeles, Matt Miller, a New York native, urged her to pick Los Angeles. As he tells it, “The joke in the family is I dragged her across the country for her job.” That was 1995, and the two “never looked back.” Below, Miller, host of KCRW’s Left, Right & Center, a fellow at the Center for American Progress and author of The Tyranny of Dead Ideas, reflects on some East Coast memories and his life in L.A.

Q. What do you wake up to?
A. We live in this place that has this really lovely view, and every morning you see a different angle of paradise, looking out over the ocean and the city.

Q. What’s your favorite word?
A. “Curiosity.“ I’m a curious person and I admire curiosity in other people. Also “energy.“

Q. What comforts you?
A. The love of my family. The snack foods that we buy for my daughter that I end up eating, like cheddar bunnies and pretzels.

Q. What inspires you?
A. Intelligence. Beauty.

Q. How would you describe yourself in five words or fewer?
A. My wife once put a little saying on a shirt she made me for Father’s Day that captures three of my favorite quotes: “the unreasonable, persistent man in the arena”….
There’s a great quote from George Bernard Shaw, “The reasonable man adapts to the world, the unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” There’s a quote on persistence from Calvin Coolidge of all people…. It’s all about how persistence is the most important quality in the world…. The last bit, the arena piece, has to do with the Teddy Roosevelt quote, “The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena.”

Q. If you could live in any other time, past, present, or future, which would it be?
A. I wish I could see my daughter and her family when they are much older.

Q. When do you feel most creative?
A. In the morning.

Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
A. Paris.

Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. Stand-up comic or comedian.

Q. Whose talent would you like to have?
A. George Bernard Shaw, or Oscar Wilde…. I think Michael Lewis is unbelievable in terms of living people, the way he can capture really incredible, smart stuff and do it with these lively narratives.

Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. Going to the Hayden Planetarium with my family.

Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. These boots. [Miller wore black and tan cowboy boots.]

Q. What teacher or professor, if any, changed your life?
A. Two teachers I had when I was a kid. One was an English teacher, who I did a lot of writing with. She was a sexy Portuguese woman, so she was kind of my early version of a muse. The other was our musical theater and choral director…. He was the disciplinarian and instilled these incredibly high standards and the work ethic to achieve them.

Q. Who is the one person living or dead that you would love to have a beer with?
A. I have this perverse fascination with Lee Kuan Yew, the long time benevolent dictator of Singapore. I really want to meet him before he dies. He took a country from third world poverty to the highest standard of living in basically one generation. I understand there are civil liberties issues but it’s unbelievable what he’s accomplished.

*Photo by Aaron Salcido.