The Proust Questionnaire: 35 Questions to Ask Yourself or Another Person

1. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

2. What is your idea of perfect happiness?

3. What is your current state of mind?

4. What is your favorite occupation?

5. What is your most treasured possession?

6. What or who is the greatest love of your life?

7. What is your favorite journey?

8. What is your most marked characteristic?

9. When and where were you the happiest?

10. What is it that you most dislike?

11. What is your greatest fear?

12. What is your greatest extravagance?

13. What living person do you most despise?

14. What is your greatest regret?

15. Which talent would you like to have?

16. Where would you like to live?

17. What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?

18. What is the quality you like most in a man?

19. What is the quality you like most in a woman?

20. What is the trait you most deplore in yourself?

21. What is the trait you most deplore in others?

22. What do you most value in your friends?\

23. Who is your favorite hero of fiction?

24/ Who are your heroes in real life?

25. What living person do you most admire?

26. What do you consider the most overrated virtue?

27. On what occasions do you lie?

28. Which words or phrases do you most overuse?

29. If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?

30. What are your favorite names?

31. How would you like to die?

32. If you could die and come back as a person or thing, what would it be?

33. Who are your favorite wtiers?

34. What historical figure do you most identify with?

35. What is your motto?

 Note:  Vanity Fair Magazine asks these questions of celebrities.  You can also google some famous people's answers.

Have fun with these.  They will take a long time.

 

For Fun

 

Books of March

 All the Frequent Troubles of Our Days.  A highly recommended book that won the Book Critics' Circle award for non-fiction, it's the story of a young American woman, married to a German and living in Berlin during the rise of Hitler and her involvement in the resistance.  

The Overnight Guest.  A supposed thriller that I forgot as soon as I finished it.  Written in the style of a middle schooler--okay a high schooler--about a woman trapped in a snowstorm who discovers a child in the snow and later an injured woman near a wrecked car.  Secrets are revealed.  Amazon listed this as an editor's pick.  I can't imagine why.

In Love.  A memoir about the author's husband, diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's who decides to end his life at Dignitas in Switzerland.  I didn't have the emotional response I would have expected from this tragic story, but it was interesting.

Did You Ever Wonder Why...?

Why is "abbreviated" such a long word?

Why don't you ever see the headline "Psychic Wins Lottery"?

Why is lemon juice made with artificial flavor and dishwashing liquid made from real lemons?

Why is the man who invests all your money called a broker?

Why is the time of day with the slowest traffic called rush hour?

Why isn't there mouse-flavored cat food?

Why didn't Noah swat those two mosquitos?

You know that indestructible black box that's used in airplanes?  Why don't they make the whole plane out of that stuff?

If "con" is the opposite of "pro," is Congress the opposite of progress?

If flying is so safe, why do they call the airport the terminal?