The question

What is your greatest fear?

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.

Hanna Tetteh

UN Special Representative for Libya; former Foreign Minister of Ghana

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
I have to be optimistic. Otherwise I'll stop. And I think that when you're doing this kind of job, you have to keep yourself optimistic. You always have to find openings and entry points and try to see what you can work with and where you can create some opportunity to have a conversation that results in some concrete outcome.

United Nations podcast, 23 June 2026 source ↗

Others on this question

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Heights. I love being high, but I don’t like being up high.
Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, January 2022 source ↗
Shirley Manson Scottish singer and songwriter; lead vocalist of Garbage
Dying of the same awful disease that took my mother – a particularly aggressive form of dementia called Pick’s disease.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 May 2022 source ↗
Carlos Slim Helú Businessman and investor; chairman of Grupo Carso and América Móvil
Do not allow negative feelings and emotions to control your mind. Emotional harm does not come from others; it is conceived and developed within ourselves.
Recorded user, interview, QuoteFancy, 1 June 2026 source ↗
John Lewis U.S. Representative from Georgia, 1987–2020; Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1963–1966
As a participant in the movement, as I was sitting in, I came to that point where I lost all sense of fear.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Chicago, 10 June 2004 source ↗

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Question What does love feel like? Relationships
I have to be optimistic. Otherwise I'll stop. And I think that when you're doing this kind of job, you have to keep yourself optimistic. You always have to find openings and entry points and try to see what you can work with and where you can create some opportunity to have a conversation that results in some concrete outcome.
Recorded United Nations podcast, 23 June 2026 source ↗

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