I’ve had this fear…the fear of being restricted—in every way.
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.
Hope Reese, interview, Longreads, 6 August 2019 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 269 →I can’t say it.
It’s a toss-up between a tarantula crawling on me and dying alone.
Flipping my wig.
More from Jia Tolentino
View profile →I had help in the form of my friend and former editor Carrie Frye
I actually did write a novel. I worked on it for five years, and then I shelved it because it was bad.
I act like a hopeful person, but I think that hope is based on having zero expectations.
I love being bad at something and getting better at it.
I needed to physically be totally alone and be in a different place to get going.
if there is anyone who’s telling you, “Here’s what you should do,” they are somehow lying to you
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