slug: "proust"
lang: en
title: Xanthe does Proust’s Questionnaire
pageCreated: "2024-07-09"
pageUpdated: "2025-09-14"
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h2 Your favourite virtue.
p The ability to admit to one’s own mistakes.
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h2 Your favourite qualities in a man.
p The embrace of his feminine side.
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h2 Your favourite qualities in a woman.
p The embrace of her masculine side.
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h2 Your favourite occupation.
p A good walk.
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h2 Your chief characteristic.
p I couldn’t possibly comment.
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h2 Your idea of happiness.
p A nice sit down by the fireplace in a musty old room full of books, music albums, and worn paintings, with a view overlooking a pool in the countryside. That’s the life right there.
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h2 Your idea of misery.
p Receiving complaints by one’s own relatives for all eternity.
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h2 Your favourite colour and flower.
p Lavender.
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h2 If not yourself, who would you be?
p A satyr, i should hope.
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h2 Where would you like to live?
p A large, secluded home, out in the countryside, but not so far out that it becomes a pain to visit the big city. Probably England, rather than the Netherlands, if only for the sheer diversity of scenery. (We’ve got #[a(href="https://www.woodlandtrust.org.uk/trees-woods-and-wildlife/habitats/temperate-rainforest/") rainforests], yi kna!)
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h2 Your favourite prose authors.
p Robert Macfarlane. Terry Pratchett.
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h2 Your favourite poets.
p William Blake. Lord Byron.
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h2 Your favourite painters and composers.
p Maxfield Parrish. Ilya Repin. Mœbius. Jon Brion. Philip Glass. Lena Raine.
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h2 Your favourite heroes in real life.
p #[b Julian], the last pagan emperor of Rome. #[b Olaudah Equiano], the abolitionist and author who escaped from slavery. #[b Lawrence Oates], the English explorer who sacrificed himself for the good of the rest of his company by walking out into the blistering Antarctic cold. #[b Willem Arondeus], the gay Dutch resistance fighter whose last words were #[i “tell the people that homosexuals are not by definition weak”]. #[b Norman Borlaug], the agronomist whose introduction of high-yield, disease-resistant wheats saved billions from starvation.
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h2 Your favourite heroines in real life.
p #[b Mary Wollstonecraft], the writer and philosopher considered one of the first feminists. #[b Marie Curie], the scientist who discovered and would perish at the hands of radioactivity.
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h2 Your favourite heroes in fiction.
p The Dude. Waymond Wang. The Doctor. Juror #8.
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h2 Your favourite heroines in fiction.
p Amélie Poulain. Trinity. Bella Baxter.
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h2 Your favourite food and drink.
p I could demolish a naan bread stuffed with döner kebab any day of the week. For a drink, sickly-sweet milk bubble tea.
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h2 Your favourite names.
p Other than my own: Aurora. Catherine. Dionis. Esther. Floriaan. Sigrid. IJsbrand. Dick van Dyke. As a surname, Urquhart.
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h2 Your pet aversion.
p Those who plug their ears at the sound of another's thought. Also, small, loud dogs.
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h2 What characters in history do you most dislike?
p #[b Le Corbusier], who ruined architecture forever in his crusade against ornament. #[b Lavrentiy Beria], the genocidal head of Stalin’s secret police. #[b David Cameron], the fluffy face of Toryism who pushed the UK into fourteen years of steep and utterly preventable decline.
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h2 What is your present state of mind?
p Wouldn’t you like to know?
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h2 For what fault have you most toleration?
p Foolishness.
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h2 Your favourite motto.
p “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”