Small things make me anxious – like social things – but I have no big fears because I have faith in my heart.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Death & what remains
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
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.
There’s no point living at my age with many ingrained great fears. Though I do have that dream that I walk out onto the stage nude. Does that count?
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, October 2015 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →
Joyce Carol Oates
Novelist, short story writer and essayist
Sometimes, it is the possibility of loneliness. Other times, it is the possibility of never being alone, having no privacy, being under the control of another.
Dependency. Fascism.
I am petrified of bikini waxing. I had a very bad experience in 1978.
More from George Takei
View profile →I went overboard on the money I invested in the production of Allegiance. It did not return, but it was fulfilling that I was able to tell a story that’s dear.
I don’t know about perfect, but a creamy scoop of green-tea ice cream comes fairly close.
When Brad and I got married. We had to struggle for it. It involved a nationwide speaking tour, lobbying Congress and campaigning intensely. We were the first couple to get our marriage licence in West Hollywood.
Barbra Streisand’s Evergreen from A Star Is Born or You’ll Never Walk Alone from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Carousel.
As someone who loved the ideals of American democracy and made my small contribution to it.
Impatience and temper. Enough already!
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? 112 answers
- What are you most proud of? 103 answers
Also answered this
Natalie Imbruglia, Ernest Borgnine, Jane Fonda, Hugh Skinner, Shakin' Stevens, Bruno Tonioli
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