A free day anywhere with a good dog.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
Verbatim recurring item in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire; two publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Perfect happiness is having a wife who loves you and doesn’t ask for too much jewelry.
The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 1 April 2003 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 158 →Any day spent laughing with friends or family.
T Bone Burnett
Musician and record producer
Perfection is a second-rate idea. I would guess, however, that perfected happiness would be joy, the most intricate and mercurial of all sensations. The moment one recognizes joy, it flees. I’m not sure where Proust is going with this line of questioning, and I don’t want to be evasive, so I will say my idea of perfect happiness is the end of economics; we grow like flowers and fly like birds; the lion lays down with the lamb—a ridiculous idea.
I think you can strive to attain it, but be realistic about the outcome. In the meantime, I find I might be experiencing it through flashes or brief moments in love and art, and at times just being alive.
More from Don Rickles
View profile →Well, Frank Sinatra’s gone, so the rest have to stand in line.
My greatest fear is going out onstage and having the audience just stare at me.
Trying too hard to be funny.
Having no patience.
More on identity & self
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- Which trait do you most dislike in yourself? 243 answers
- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 195 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 111 answers
- What are you most proud of? 103 answers
Also answered this
Antonio Banderas, Sophia Loren, DJ Khaled, James Taylor, Betty White, George Takei
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