Losing family, friends, and loved ones.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
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.
I can’t say it.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 July 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 266 →
Malala Yousafzai
Education campaigner; co-founder of the Malala Fund; United Nations Messenger of Peace
Losing my family. And fear that the world won't become a better place.
Sharks. The ones in the ocean.
Patrick Stewart
Actor
That I would lose her.
More from Andrew O’Hagan
View profile →Just. Hanging. On.
Somebody once told me I was the spitting image of David Cameron.
Most days, I wanted to be Albrecht in the classical ballet Giselle, dancing until I dropped dead.
Like getting out of the right side of the bed every morning, even when you don’t.
As a good friend.
My first holy communion, where my trousers were too big for me and fell down, a circumstance which earned me both the instant contempt of the girls and the heightened interest of the priests. That’s just how it was in 1975.
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
Penny Lancaster, Paul Merson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Rosie Jones, Christine Baranski, Helen Skelton
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- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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