That it takes a week for someone to discover my body.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
How would you like to die?
Death & what remains
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Question
What problem are you still trying to solve?
Craft & work
Question
What inspires you to learn?
Attention & the world
Question
What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
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.
As a participant in the movement, as I was sitting in, I came to that point where I lost all sense of fear.
Academy of Achievement interview, Chicago, 10 June 2004 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 255 →I can’t say it.
Charlotte Rampling
English actress
To die before I know certain things.
Judy Blume
Novelist
That we’re going down the tubes as a country (make that the whole world).
More from John Lewis
View profile →I don't want to die. I don't think I'm going to die…but we all have to die. Since I do, I hope I live on in the hearts and minds of people.
Participating in a transformative movement that advocated human dignity and changed America forever.
There are many battles. There’s so much that needs to be done. We need to protect the environment. Save this little planet. Not just this little piece of real estate we call America, but save the planet.
I wanted to know. I asked a lot of questions and she would say, "Read, read."…So she inspired me a great deal.
Recorded
Julian Bond, Explorations in Black Leadership interview, Explorations in Black Leadership, University of Virginia
source ↗
You must find a way to get in the way, you must find a way to get into trouble — good trouble, necessary trouble.
Recorded
Emory University Quadrangle, Atlanta, Emory News Center, Emory University, 12 May 2014
source ↗
When I was growing up on a farm in rural Alabama, I fell in love with raising chickens. They seem truly innocent. Whenever I'm around chickens, I feel happy.
More on identity & self
- Which trait do you most dislike in yourself? 243 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 192 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 158 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 110 answers
- What are you most proud of? 100 answers
Also answered this · A–Z
Bill Moyers, Bob Schieffer, Caroline Lucas, Charles Osgood, Chris Bryant, Ed Koch
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- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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