Figuratively doing nothing.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
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.
My belief that saying it makes it happen.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, February 2009 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →
Fran Lebowitz
American author and public speaker
Rodents – including the tiniest mouse.
Climate change.
Neil Patrick Harris
Actor
That it all goes away and never comes back.
More from Dustin Hoffman
View profile →The Portuguese director Manoel de Oliveira, who is 100 years old and still working.
The moment I knew I would spend my life with Lisa.
When the coffee kicks in early in the morning and I’m on the couch with my dogs, reading the paper.
More on identity & self
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- 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
Anjelica Huston, Dawn O’Porter, Michelle Collins, Ai Weiwei, Marcus Brigstocke, Stanley Tucci
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- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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