Personal: health. Globally: nuclear weapons.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Question
What most recently made you cry?
Identity & self
Question
Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
Taste & recommendation
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What single thing would improve the quality of your life?
Daily life
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
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.
Immunity to cruelty.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 April 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 266 →
Neil Patrick Harris
Actor
That it all goes away and never comes back.
I fear nothing, except for flying.
My belief that saying it makes it happen.
More from Gregory Porter
View profile →I worry about doing everything right with my kids.
Telling a story to my son about my brother.
Because it’s in one of my songs, War and Peace.
“You’re selfish.” It was a friend.
More time with my boys.
The years of self-doubt.
More on identity & self
- Which trait do you most dislike in yourself? 252 answers
- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 204 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 161 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 114 answers
- What are you most proud of? 109 answers
Also answered this
Mel Brooks, David Hare, Ed Koch, Shirley Manson, Christopher Hitchens, Kevin Rowland
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject