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.
Being too damned self-absorbed.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, December 2021 source ↗
Sometimes I follow my instincts more than my reason.
When I’m self-involved or insensitive to others.
I would deplore feeling deplorable about myself.
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.
Being in a Broadway theater full of people laughing their heads off at one of my shows.
Taking daily showers and always being there when I need them.
Probably me, but I don’t think I’m supposed to say that!
Probably during my childhood growing up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
Never picking up the check.
A Broadway theater filled with nothing but critics.
Jason Derulo, Douglas Booth, Shonda Rhimes, Sharon Corr, Robert Glenister, Ally McCoist
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