Kurt Vonnegut
Novelist and essayist
Bad things happening to my children and grandchildren.
What is your greatest fear?
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
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.
Outliving my kids – and rats.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 March 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 279 →Being confined in a straitjacket.
Food in a sink drain.
Losing my makeup bag.
More from John Simm
View profile →Working in a very busy bar in the West End when I was trying to pay my way through drama school. I had to dance in a cage in a vest and cycling shorts to Venus by Bananarama, Greased Lightnin’ and Y.M.C.A. every night. It was excruciating.
Going to pieces while meeting John Squire, the lead guitarist of the Stone Roses, backstage after a gig. I completely lost the ability to speak. I told him I had the same guitars as he’d just used on stage, and when he asked me which ones, the words completely went out of my head and there was a huge pause, and then his wife tapped his shoulder and he wandered off.
Live in the moment. Enjoy life because time cruelly speeds up as you get older and becomes scarily finite.
Arrogance, bullying, meanness – just try to be kind, it’s not difficult.
A couple of years ago we moved to East Sussex – I had been living in London for 35 years – and couldn’t work out why I kept waking up and thinking, what’s that sound? It was actually silence.
Professionally, becoming a relative success in a job that I love; and personally, helping to raise two wonderful children.
More on identity & self
- Which trait do you most dislike in yourself? 257 answers
- What did you want to be when you were growing up? 222 answers
- What most recently made you cry? 193 answers
- What is your idea of perfect happiness? 165 answers
- How would you describe yourself in three words? 120 answers
- What are you most proud of? 117 answers
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Charles Dance, Daryl McCormack, Sally Field, David Hasselhoff, Jerry Lewis, Ephraim Asili
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- All identity & self questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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