Leslie Gelb remembers his first job, though he prefers to characterize it as “enforced slavery.” Gelb, now president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Power Rules, spent much of his youth working at a grocery store run by his Hungarian immigrant parents. “I never regarded it as great fun,” Gelb said, and he noted that it was “a very hard life for them, the way lots of immigrants live.” Read more about Gelb below.

Q. What do you wake up to?
A. We wake up every morning to the cats, three cats, who come to ask for their breakfast.

Q. What music have you listened to today?
A. Nothing, because I was talking about my book or sleeping and trying to forget about talking about my book.

Q. What’s your favorite word?
A. Love.

Q. What do you find beautiful?
A. People.

Q. How would you describe yourself in five words or fewer?
A. Terrific family member and friend, formidable foe.

Q. When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up?
A. A basketball player.

Q. What is your favorite cocktail?
A. A vodka from the freezer, straight up.

Q. What is your greatest extravagance?
A. Milky Ways.

Q. If you could take only one more journey, where would you go?
A. I’d want to go stand at the top of the Grand Canyon.

Q. What profession would you like to practice in your next life?
A. I wouldn’t want to be an foreign policy expert again, it’s too frustrating…. I think I would want to be a novelist.

Q. What is your fondest childhood memory?
A. The joy of going to parties, family celebrations, with my parents.

Q. What is your most prized material possession?
A. The television.

Q. What promise do you make to yourself that you break the most often?
A. To be disciplined.

Q. What should you throw away but haven’t been able to part with?
A. Old clothes.

Q. Who would write your biography?
A. No one I know. A stranger.

Q. Who is the one person living or dead that you’d most love to have a beer with?
A. Abraham Lincoln.

To read more about Gelb’s lecture, click here.

*Photo by Aaron Salcido.