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.
Losing family, friends, and loved ones.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, September 2025 source ↗
Figuratively doing nothing.
At age 97 and counting, guess.
I think that loss of speech, and of understanding of speech, and of understanding of writing, and of coherent writing – these losses will amount to the loss of my mind. I know what this feels like and it has no insides, no internal echo. Mind means talking to oneself. There wouldn't be any secret mind surviving in me.
Running out of ideas.
Gabby Giffords. She’s a survivor of gun violence and a relentless champion of sensible gun safety measures.
Being there for each other during good times and bad.
Being judgmental.
Playing the Cowardly Lion in our fourth-grade production of The Wizard of Oz. Thank you, Mr. Riccobono.
Procrastinating. I saved answering this questionnaire until the very last minute.
David Hasselhoff, Jerry Lewis, Hans Zimmer, Danielle Steel, Alison Goldfrapp, Gloria Steinem
Search the directory for somebody in particular.