Yo-Yo Ma
Cellist
My inability to keep track of personal possessions.
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
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.
I’ve constantly been changing myself my whole life. I am what you would call “a piece of work” in progress.
The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 3 April 2020 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 49 →How my PTSD manifests—it feels like being the only ballerina in the company saddled with a 100-pound backpack and told to go out onstage and still be graceful.
I would care less about what people thought of me.
Kazuo Ishiguro
Novelist and screenwriter; Nobel laureate in Literature, 2017
I always dreamt of having a second stomach I could carry around in a bag, which I could attach to my real stomach when I sat down in restaurants. That way, I could eat a huge amount, never gaining weight.
More from Cyndi Lauper
View profile →Two-faced phony-baloneys.
A world where greed rules.
At a function for the True Colors Fund, where formerly homeless gay and transgender kids were telling their stories. It was heartbreaking.
I cut people off a lot when I talk. It’s a terrible habit.
Long walks with my husband. Being with my family. Making music, and writing when songs just fall together. And maybe a cannoli. Just one.
My son. He is a teenager.
More on identity & self
- What is your greatest fear? 255 answers
- 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
Also answered this · A–Z
Alice Waters, Allison Janney, Antonio Banderas, Aretha Franklin, Barack Obama, Bonnie Raitt
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- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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