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The question

Which quality in your friends matters most to you?

Originally asked

Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire

A fixed Vanity Fair Proust Questionnaire item asked across its three-decade archive, with independent variants in friendship and profile interviews.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

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Judy Blume Novelist
I love that my true friends don’t think of me as that Judy, but as the Judy they’ve known for years, a woman, like them. And I love their senses of humor.
Recorded The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 28 April 2023 source ↗

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Question Which teacher, parent, coach, or friend most made you who you are, and what did you learn from them? Relationships
My father would make sure that I knew what it meant. Just to give you an example, I started bodybuilding with the age of 15, and my father would say, why are you lifting these dumbbells and barbells? Don't you think it would be better to just go out and chop some wood and shovel some coal for some poor people that don't have anyone? Therefore you would get muscles. But at the same time, you're doing something useful. You're doing something for somebody rather than just for yourself and looking in a mirror at yourself and stuff like that. So he would make sure that you knew what being useful meant.
Recorded A Martínez, Morning Edition, NPR, 6 October 2023 source ↗
Question Do you rely more on inspiration or discipline to make your work? Craft & work
It's just, I would say, faith. I had very clear visions of me being a champion. When I saw this picture of Reg Park on a cover, standing there like - as Hercules, from the Hercules movies, I looked at that, and then I looked at the inside and I read the story, and I immediately started creating visions of me standing there on the pedestal at the Mr. Universe contest and me being Hercules and me doing movies and so on. And that created such unbelievable drive and such unbelievable will and discipline, that there was absolutely no stopping me. I mean, I went to the gym two hours every day lifting weights. When I came home afterwards, I lifted an extra hour and a half and did bodybuilding training, and it was just relentless.
Recorded David Greene, Talk of the Nation, NPR, 2 October 2012 source ↗

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