Incapacitation.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
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.
To lose the ability to do my work.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, September 2014 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →A Reform government.
Jerry Lewis
American comedian, actor and filmmaker
When the audience walks toward the stage.
Being murdered – I listen to too many true-crime podcasts.
More from Lena Dunham
View profile →Casual cruelty; the wearing of essential oils.
An “elastic” sense of time (fancy way of saying I am late a lot).
My uncle, Edward Wood Dunham. He has Parkinson’s disease and faces every day with bravery, humor, and a gin-and-tonic.
Unmade bed surrounded by books, writing utensils, and the dog; a plate of demolished toast with butter on my chest; loved ones puttering not too close but not too far.
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? 196 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? 112 answers
- What are you most proud of? 104 answers
Also answered this
Alison Steadman, Terry Gross, Paul McKenna, Neil Patrick Harris, Father John Misty, Joyce Carol Oates
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject