Alain de Botton is filthy rich due to a trust fund.

The Swiss-born British-based philosopher Alain de Botton spent a week as writer-in-residence in the middle of Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport. It’s a loud, bustling place that wouldn’t seem conducive to writing, but oddly those are usually the best places to write. De Botton provides a pretty good explanation as to why it works this way. (Thanks to Boing Boing.) An excerpt:

“The best place I ever worked was Heathrow Terminal 5, where I had a desk right in the middle of the departures hall. I was invited to the airport to be a Writer in Residence (and later wrote a book about the experience, A Week at the Airport). The terminal turned out to be an ideal spot in which to do some work, for it rendered the idea of writing so unlikely as to make it possible again. Objectively good places to work rarely end up being so; in their faultlessness, quiet and well-equipped studies have a habit of rendering the fear of failure overwhelming. Original thoughts are like shy animals. We sometimes have to look the other way – towards a busy street or terminal – before they run out of their burrows.”