The question
Which trait in yourself do you like least?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's The Q&A has retained this Proust-derived prompt from at least 2007 through 2026, and ABC independently put it to the Obamas in 2011.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I dislike my impatience.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, September 2019 source ↗
If I had a trait that I truly deplored, I would work to erase or modify it…Probably, a lack of discipline. (Though people think that I write quickly, & don’t revise, quite the reverse is true.) To myself, I work very slowly & painstakingly, & am often frustrated by accomplishing so little. My friend Margaret Atwood has said that in the late afternoon she is likely to be overcome by a feeling of desperation that she has accomplished so little that day, & this is a feeling I share, often. It seems that I waste most of my time gazing out the window here at my (overgrown) garden; & when I am in Berkeley, where I spend about one-third of the year, I am forever gazing out the window toward the San Francisco Bay & a continually changing, always-beautiful sky.
The fact that sometimes my mouth is a little too big and a little too open and sounds too much like a sailor.
My lack of foreign language skills.
My personality.
Bryan Stevenson.
Having the opportunity to contribute and serve.
Bigotry and cruelty in any form.
Esther Freud, Lemn Sissay, Chris McCausland, Alfred Molina, Carly Simon, Keren Woodward
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