I’m quite scared of bats. I’m just seeing rats with wings – no, thanks.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
The exact prompt is fixed in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire and independently sustained in The Guardian's The Q&A over multiple decades.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Regrets. That’s no way to live.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 29 March 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →That I will suddenly lose my sense of humor, and everyone knows it but me.
Cory Taylor
Novelist and screenwriter
He’s always been the family cook. He’s been feeding me since the day we met. Everything I know about Japanese food I know because of him. So now that’s another pleasure gone, perhaps the greatest. I don’t know how long it takes to die of starvation, or whether it hurts, but I dread it, just as I dread my sons watching me go like that. Because that is what they will remember, their mother reduced to a bag of bones. What it will do to Shin I can’t bear to contemplate.
Recorded
Edited extract from Dying: A Memoir, published by Text Publishing, The Guardian, 17 May 2016
source ↗
Kellie Maloney
Retired boxing manager, promoter and politician
Losing my family.
More from Erin Doherty
View profile →My sister. She is the most loving, positive and generous person I know.
Oh when was the last time I didn’t?! I’m a crier. I cry. All the time.
Offer kindness always.
The three things I strive for are authenticity, presence and empathy. You’d have to ask my loved ones if I’m pulling them off.
A good listener.
I was the PE technician at my old secondary school, so I had to pump up all the balls, wash all the kits and get the form notes in before morning registration every day.
More on identity & self
- Which trait do you most dislike in yourself? 243 answers
- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 195 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 158 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 111 answers
- What are you most proud of? 103 answers
Also answered this
Andrea Bocelli, Judy Blume, Robert Carlyle, Robert De Niro, Eugene Levy, Tom Ford
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- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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