Apathy, either from an audience, the people around me or myself.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
Change of mind
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
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.
I become very anxious if I think I’ve hurt someone.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 January 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 264 →It used to be loneliness, and it might still be.
Of choking on some food and having no one nearby to do the Heimlich maneuver.
Audra McDonald
Singer and actor
Balloons. I have a big phobia of balloons. Big.
More from Rory Stewart
View profile →Carelessness of truth and others.
Living in a ski resort.
Moments of vanity, carelessness and unkindness.
The US election showed me that I had trapped myself in wishful thinking.
Having somebody pull my judo trousers down at a competition when I was seven. And finding I wasn’t wearing any pants.
A painting of a man who was killed on the Dutch coast in 1600.
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- All identity & self questions
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