I’ve discovered that I have no happiness other than my dogs’. If they’re happy, I’m happy. That sounds like something my mother used to say about her children, which I always thought was slightly manipulative and way overstated. I was wrong.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Identity & self
Question
How would you like to die?
Death & what remains
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.
Being aware and accepting of whatever the state of my mind happens to be at the moment (even if that state is unhappy).
The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 25 January 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
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Gloria Steinem
Writer and feminist organiser
I’m walking down a street in New York, the sun is shining, I’m on my way to see friends who are chosen family—and I’ve just written a couple of pages that I like.
Creating something and feeling proud of it.
A good nap and a full house.
More from George Saunders
View profile →Pittsford, New York, writing my first book when our kids were small, riding my bike to work because we only had one car…that feeling of being needed and loved and vitally involved in something artistic that I didn’t fully understand, everything still lying ahead of us.
I’d like to have a more generous, less anxious mind.
Read incorrectly, that sounds like a threat. No thanks, Vanity Fair !
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Also answered this
Judy Blume, Eugene Levy, Patti Smith, Kazuo Ishiguro, Stephen Fry, Joyce Carol Oates
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- All identity & self questions
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