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.
Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 18 September 2006 source ↗
I wouldn’t change anything about myself. If you asked me 20 years ago, I probably would have had a long list. But I’ve learned to appreciate and love who I am.
I wish I always had the right word in the right moment at the right time and not two hours later in my car going home.
That I would have focused more on languages.
I'm trying to be more organized.
As for motivation, I'd say it's a combo of 50s Puritan work ethic and finish-it-itis -- I hate not finishing things.
That human beings will follow their stupid and greedy side, rather than their smart side, and go down the plughole. We’re circling the rim.
Can't pick and choose, it's bad luck.
In 1972, by Farley Mowat, after I’d had a modest success: “Now you’re a target, and people will shoot at you.” Which is not about how to write, but about some of the consequences of having done so.
The white-water canoe run I did solo at Lady Evelyn Park 20 years ago. It was impromptu. It took the skin off my knees. It was an unnecessary risk.
At what age? It’s been a long path. I’ll stick with Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell. (“Someday I’d like to try a book like that,” I said to myself, “only with a female narrator. It would of course be quite different.”)
George Saunders, Carrie Fisher, Danielle Steel, Patti Smith, Adam Gopnik, Kazuo Ishiguro
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