Losing my makeup bag.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Question
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Money & investment
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What would you like to leave your children?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
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.
I’m from Birmingham. I’m not afraid of things. Things are afraid of me.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 June 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 273 →To lose the ability to do my work.
Judy Blume
Novelist
That we’re going down the tubes as a country (make that the whole world).
Pigeons. One got stuck in my flat once for quite a long time and it really changed how I feel about them.
More from Lee Child
View profile →In 1993, making love on the beach of a deserted island in the Bahamas.
Nothing. If I’m worried or upset or tormented, I go to sleep quickly and easily, to find welcome oblivion.
A painting by Renoir, paid for by demanding a huge fee for a screenwriting deal with a producer I didn’t want to work for. The movie was never made.
“Try this, you’ll love it.”
More than I can, sadly. I led the softest of lives in the softest of times, and my daughter will face sterner challenges.
Do the secret thing you know you were born to do.
More on identity & self
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- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 217 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 165 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 120 answers
- What are you most proud of? 115 answers
Also answered this
Roger Ebert, Rose Tremain, Charles Dance, Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, Tim Peake, David Byrne
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- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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