Robert De Niro
Actor
I’m certainly not going to tell it here.
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Question
How would you like to die?
Death & what remains
Question
What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?
Craft & work
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to?
Daily life
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.
Narcissism, solipsism.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, November 2016 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 243 →Thinking that I am less-than. That thinking is cunning, baffling, and insidious, and I must guard against it every hour of every day.
Jacqueline Wilson
English novelist
Catastrophising.
Impatience and vanity.
More from Zadie Smith
View profile →Oblivious to the event or on the brink of a genuine religious conversion.
Don’t romanticise your “vocation”. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no “writer’s lifestyle”. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
Violent death. Death generally.
I feel almost certain I don't know them. It would be one of these types who dedicate their lives to the welfare of others, whereas the people I tend to know are people making stories out of the dramas of themselves.
Reading quietly, in high grass, among loved ones (who are also quietly reading). Followed by a boozy lunch.
Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
More on identity & self
Also answered this
Jacqueline Wilson, Fay Ripley, John Grisham, Joyce Carol Oates, Julian Clary, Frank Cottrell-Boyce
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