What is your favorite virtue?

What do you appreciate the most in your friends? Where would you like to live? If not yourself, who would you be? Who are your favorite heroes in fiction? What is your idea of misery?

These personality probing questions are from the Proust Questionnaire, named after French novelist and essayist Marcel Proust, who discovered the questions in a friend’s confession album.

When asked his favorite virtue, Proust responded, “The need to be loved; more precisely, the need to be caressed and spoiled much more than the need to be admired.” When asked his idea of happiness, he wrote, “I am afraid it be not great enough, I dare not speak it, I am afraid of destroying it by speaking it.” His idea of misery was “Not to have known my mother or my grandmother.”

Most of the Proust questions are easy to answer (What is your favorite color?), while others are more contemplative (What is your idea of happiness?).

Every time I attempt to answer the Proust Questionnaire, I get bogged down in detail. My favorite color? It depends — am I wearing it or decorating my home with it? My main fault? Hard to pin down just one. My idea of misery? What day is it?

Vanity Fair publishes a Proust Questionnaire, answered by celebrities, on the back page of the magazine. One of my favorite questions is “Which historical figure do you most identify with?” I’m still undecided, though Grace Coolidge is a candidate. Grace and husband Calvin, the 30th president of the United States, loved animals and owned a Sheltie and several collies, my canine alter ego.

Vanity Fair’s October “Proust” celebrity is Ina Garten, the TV chef and cookbook author who pens the bestselling Barefoot Contessa cookbooks. She has some great answers. I love her response to “What is your motto?” Hey, that’s my motto too!

Proust Questionnaire courtesy of Wikipedia.