Unemployment – I’m an actor.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
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 don’t even voice them. Perhaps the books are my outlet here.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 August 2024 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 256 →
Charlotte Rampling
English actress
To die before I know certain things.
Still nuclear annihilation.
Naming my greatest fear, because then I’ll have to admit it, won’t I?
More from Harlan Coben
View profile →With a wistful smile.
I was followed by a mob of fans when I was doing a photoshoot in Paris. When I signed autographs for them during a break, one remarked: “Who the fuck is Harlan Coben? I told you it wasn’t Bruce Willis.”
I worked a janitorial job, cleaning university dormitories after students had gone home for the summer. You can’t imagine the condition some of those rooms were in. They could have doubled as sets for a slasher film.
We are too often advised to live life to the fullest. That’s too much pressure. The key is to find joy and poignancy in the quiet and mundane. Life is lived between the so-called big moments.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but if I could go back and fix the mistake, I wouldn’t be here.
A white-hot explosion that turns into a comforting warmth.
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Rose Tremain, Zadie Smith, Danielle Steel, Fay Ripley, Fran Lebowitz, Jane Asher
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