Gayle King: What do you fear most?

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.

Gayle King

Broadcaster

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

I know we all have to die, but when my time comes, I’d rather it not be because a goose flew into the engine of a plane I’m on.

Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, July 2016 source ↗

Others on this question

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John Simm English musician and actor

Outliving my kids – and rats.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 March 2023 source ↗

Ina Garten Cookery writer and shop owner

Pain. I told Jeffrey that if I have a really bad headache just pull the plug.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, September 2016 source ↗

Antonio Banderas

The death of my loved ones.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, December 2019 source ↗

Warren Buffett Chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, 1970–2025

And now, you've got nine countries, including, you know, a guy in North Korea. I mean, and there will be, something will happen. And we worried enormously about it when there were two. And we had perfectly, we had really pretty sane leaders in Kennedy and Khrushchev. You know, I mean, you were not dealing with unstable people or anything like that.

Recorded Becky Quick, CNBC “Squawk Box”, recorded in Omaha; CNBC's own transcript of its own broadcast, 31 March 2026 source ↗