Falling asleep watching a movie on a sofa because I drank too much wine at dinner, my head resting on the thigh of a loved one, who will later explain what happened.
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
How would you like to die?
Death & what remains
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.
Perfection is a second-rate idea. I would guess, however, that perfected happiness would be joy, the most intricate and mercurial of all sensations. The moment one recognizes joy, it flees. I’m not sure where Proust is going with this line of questioning, and I don’t want to be evasive, so I will say my idea of perfect happiness is the end of economics; we grow like flowers and fly like birds; the lion lays down with the lamb—a ridiculous idea.
The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 1 January 2014 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 158 →Making a gourmet dinner with my husband, Tom, then just hanging out with our four children, their spouses, and our delightful grandchildren.
Danielle Steel
Novelist
Healthy, happy children. A wonderful, loving partner with whom to share my life.
Yogi Berra
Baseball catcher and manager; ten-time World Series winner with the New York Yankees
To relax without being bothered.
More from T Bone Burnett
View profile →My happiest moment was being in the room when my daughter was born, and seeing her draw her first breath and turn from what looked like gray clay into the deepest, most vibrant, most psychedelic crimson. It was an unforgettable, unimaginable explosion of energy and potential—of promise and pure love.
I would like to die in good health, at an old age, in a house on a mountain that looks out over the ocean, dreaming about everyone and everything I have had the impossible good fortune to have loved. Maybe Ralph Stanley is singing “Angel Band.”
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