Generally? Hurting someone’s feelings. Specifically? Being kidnapped while on vacation.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
How would you like to die?
Death & what remains
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
Which living person do you most admire, and why?
Values & belief
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
In the last five years, what have you become better at saying no to?
Daily life
Question
What are bad recommendations you hear in your profession or area of expertise?
Craft & work
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.
Violent death. Death generally.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, November 2016 source ↗
Others on this question
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Bryn Terfel
Welsh bass-baritone singer
I’ve been a strong advocate that all my five children should be great swimmers, so you can deduce what my fear is.
Still nuclear annihilation.
Dolly Parton
American singer-songwriter, actress and businesswoman
Flipping my wig.
More from Zadie Smith
View profile →Oblivious to the event or on the brink of a genuine religious conversion.
Narcissism, solipsism.
I feel almost certain I don't know them. It would be one of these types who dedicate their lives to the welfare of others, whereas the people I tend to know are people making stories out of the dramas of themselves.
Reading quietly, in high grass, among loved ones (who are also quietly reading). Followed by a boozy lunch.
Protect the time and space in which you write. Keep everybody away from it, even the people who are most important to you.
Don’t romanticise your “vocation”. You can either write good sentences or you can’t. There is no “writer’s lifestyle”. All that matters is what you leave on the page.
More on identity & self
- Which trait do you most dislike in yourself? 243 answers
- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 195 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 158 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 111 answers
- What are you most proud of? 103 answers
Also answered this
Stephen Fry, Fran Lebowitz, Fay Ripley, John Grisham, Joyce Carol Oates, Julian Clary
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