If I haven’t seen them in years and yet can pick up conversation like it was yesterday.
What do you value most in your friends?
Question
How would you like to die?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
A fixed Vanity Fair Proust Questionnaire item asked across its three-decade archive, with independent variants in friendship and profile interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Their willingness to put up with my endless explanations about why I can’t see them because I’m under deadline.
The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 1 September 2012 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 65 →Honesty, trustworthiness, and a deep understanding of emotions.
Compassion. Wisdom. Wit. The delicate balance of knowing when I need tough love and when I need support. Plus, call me crazy, but I’m also partial to friends who don’t surreptitiously record our calls.
Malala Yousafzai
Education campaigner; co-founder of the Malala Fund; United Nations Messenger of Peace
They treat me as a regular person.
More from Terry Gross
View profile →Swiftly, painlessly, and old.
The inability to stop talking about themselves when they’re not being interviewed.
Living with severe chronic pain, or forgetting the name of the person I’m interviewing.
A glass of wine, a good dinner with my husband, and a day ahead of me without a deadline is close enough.
More on relationships
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Allison Janney, Amy Poehler, Andrea Martin, Anjelica Huston, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Bernadette Peters
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- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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