I like all my friends for different reasons, so it’s hard to pick one quality I value most highly overall.
What do you value most in your friends?
Question
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure?
Failure & regret
Question
Who helps you get things done?
Craft & work
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
How much rewriting or revision do you do?
Craft & work
Question
What is an unusual habit or an absurd thing that you love?
Daily life
Question
Who do you turn to when you need advice?
Relationships
Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
A fixed Vanity Fair Proust Questionnaire item asked across its three-decade archive, with independent variants in friendship and profile interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Vulnerability. Mutual admiration. Wide open communication. Yeah. Those are my big three.
Jonny Miller, podcast transcript, Curious Humans, 9 August 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 75 →The ability to be themselves rather than hiding behind a mask.
Sally Field
Actor
That they won’t let me hide.
Hans Zimmer
Film composer
They can take the piss out of me and it still feels like wisdom and loyalty.
More from Derek Sivers
View profile →In the end, I had to pay $3.3 million dollars to buy back that 90%.
I have no team business-wise. I should mention that I have no assistant or team at all.
Recorded
Kelly Irving, community interview transcript, Expert Author Community, 29 August 2025
source ↗
I don’t have any fears.
The first version of my How to Live book was 1300 pages. It took a couple of years to write and it was 1300 pages, and then it took a couple of years to edit it down to 115 pages. Most of my writing process is editing.
And this is my only pair of pants. These three glasses, I don’t even think about it because I just think about having enough.
I literally just call my five or ten best friends around the world. Sometimes I just go through the list. I call Aly. Ah, no answer. Okay, let me try Mitra. Ah, no answer. Okay, let me try Zita. "Hey, I got an idea. Let me run it by you? Okay? You got a minute?"
Recorded
Kelly Irving, community interview transcript, Expert Author Community, 29 August 2025
source ↗
More on relationships
Also answered this
Tom Kerridge, Warren Buffett, Henry R. Kravis, Akio Toyoda, Ina Garten, Abby Wambach
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