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.

Recorded Dolly Parton said elsewhere, not written here
Flipping my wig.

Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, November 2012 source ↗

Others on this question

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It was reading out loud, but no longer. (I am dyslexic.) I was encouraged by my husband to do a speech for the Royal National Institute of Blind People, which helped me gain my confidence, and the fear disappeared.
Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 27 September 2025 source ↗
Fay Ripley English actress, television presenter, cookbook author
Spiders, needles, blood, pain and breaking wind in public.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 26 November 2022 source ↗

More from Dolly Parton

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Question What are you most proud of? Identity & self
Well, I’m proud of all of them. I think the one that’s most personal to me is the lil’ Coat of Many Colors, because it talks about my mom, my parents, and kind of gives you an insight. It also covers bullying, acceptance and all that.
Recorded Guardian reader “VerulamiumParkRanger”; as told to Rich Pelley, Guardian reader interview, The Guardian, 31 October 2024 source ↗

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