My wife, Melanie. She's had real trauma and loss in her life, yet she starts every day with joy, and sees the world as a good place
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's Q&A repeatedly uses this prompt, sometimes dropping 'living' while retaining the same comparative judgment.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, January 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 403 →The Queen. Her like has not been seen before and I doubt it will ever be again.
Oprah Winfrey. She always does the right thing—even when no one is looking.
I have a lot of respect and admiration for President Carter. It was a delight when I got the Nobel Peace Prize to get a letter from him. It meant a lot to me, getting that letter from a man who is my idol in many ways. ... He always has the courage to express his views, his convictions. He doesn’t hesitate to run against the current. He has always had a moral certitude. He looks at the ethics and morality of his action, and that’s key. Whatever we do in life, whether privately or publicly, we need to have a compass. We need to be sure that what we do is not only good for us, but good for the people at large. That’s ethics. That’s morality. I think we need to always know that our work is not just good for us in the short term, but it’s morally correct. And when I talk about morality, I don’t talk about religion. I talk about a moral code, a moral value, which I think we all have, being honest, being fair, being correct. These are values I think we all share.
More from Ben Stiller
View profile →Losing my mind.
Being in process on a creative project I love.
Probably as a small child in a pool in my mother’s arms.
Self-importance.
More on values & belief
- What is the trait you most deplore in others? 196 answers
- What is something everyone in your world agrees about that you think is wrong? 77 answers
- What are you unwilling to optimise? 27 answers
- What have you come to understand about what it means to be human? 13 answers
- What is the most overrated virtue? 10 answers
- What do you need to believe in order to get through the day? 8 answers
Also answered this · A–Z
Abi Morgan, Adam Clayton, Adeel Akhtar, Adwoa Aboah, Alfre Woodard, Alice Eve
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All values & belief questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject