Bob Woodward: What is your greatest fear?

The question

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.

Bob Woodward

Investigative reporter and author; associate editor of The Washington Post

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

I think I dropped the ball here. I should have pushed much, much harder on the skepticism about the reality of WMD; in other words, [I should have] said, 'Hey, look, the evidence is not as strong as they were claiming.'

N/A, N/A, Wikipedia, 1 June 2024 source ↗

Others on this question

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Bintou Keita UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General; head of the UN peacekeeping mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo

I don't believe in that. I think we are bringing who we are in the work.

Recorded Melissa Fleming, United Nations, 3 February 2025 source ↗

Dervla Kirwan

Ironically, it’s talking to hundreds of people in a room.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 28 October 2023 source ↗

David Hare Playwright and screenwriter

All good dramatists are scared of the audience.

Recorded Angela Wintle, This much I know, The Guardian, 17 February 2018 source ↗

Rosie Jones British comedian and actress

Not being liked.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 31 December 2022 source ↗

More from Bob Woodward

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Question What are you most proud of? Identity & self

I don’t know whether I feel pride. I think pride is hubris. I think it is an emotion that if you bask in it, it’s like hate; it will destroy you. So I don’t make those kinds of assessments. I like what I do. I am repeatedly struck by how I have missed part of the story, always.

Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Washington D.C., 1 May 2003 source ↗

Question What did you want to be when you were growing up? Identity & self

I studied history and English at Yale, which I attended on an NROTC (Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps) scholarship. After college I served in the Navy five years.

Recorded N/A, N/A, Bob Woodward's Official Website, 1 June 2024 source ↗

Question Which teacher, parent, coach or friend most made you who you are, and what did you learn from them? Relationships

Oh, yes, I had teachers at Wheaton. A community high school history teacher named Elizabeth Duncan who taught American history and was a great teacher. Very forceful, very insistent that we write essays to answer questions, and not short answers. Somebody who through force of personality made history interesting and important.

Recorded Academy of Achievement interview source ↗