Of choking on some food and having no one nearby to do the Heimlich maneuver.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What inspires you to learn?
Attention & the world
Question
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure?
Failure & regret
Question
How would you like to die?
Death & what remains
Question
What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?
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.
As a participant in the movement, as I was sitting in, I came to that point where I lost all sense of fear.
Academy of Achievement interview, Chicago, 10 June 2004 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →Heights, and not getting along with people.
A plane that I’m on plunging into the sea. Aside from that, pigeons.
Sharks. The ones in the ocean.
More from John Lewis
View profile →When I was growing up I wanted to be a minister. I wanted to preach.
My tendency to skip meals.
I wanted to know. I asked a lot of questions and she would say, "Read, read."…So she inspired me a great deal.
Recorded
Julian Bond, Explorations in Black Leadership interview, Explorations in Black Leadership, University of Virginia
source ↗
I never thought that we would fail or that I would fail. I knew from time to time we may make some blunders. We may make some mistakes, but we were not going to fail.
I don't want to die. I don't think I'm going to die…but we all have to die. Since I do, I hope I live on in the hearts and minds of people.
You must find a way to get in the way, you must find a way to get into trouble — good trouble, necessary trouble.
Recorded
Emory University Quadrangle, Atlanta, Emory News Center, Emory University, 12 May 2014
source ↗
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
Charles Osgood, Bob Schieffer, Gloria Steinem, Malala Yousafzai, Monica Lewinsky, Caroline Lucas
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- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject