Identity & self

What is your greatest fear?

256 answers answered between 1999 and 2026 one of 5 in The Proust Questionnaire

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.

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Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Science and medicine 1 Arts and letters 223 Politics and public life 18 Business and finance 7 Sport 7
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Frank McCourt Teacher and memoirist; winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography
It was desperate because of certain things, ingredients like my father being an alcoholic, my mother having too many babies in too short a time, no work available in Ireland, and even when my father did get a job he drank the wages. Then there was the harsh kind of schooling we had with school masters who ruled with a stick and then because of the overwhelming presence of the church, which imbued us with fear all the time. So it was fear, dampness, poverty, alcoholism, fear of the church, fear of the school masters, fear in general.
Recorded Academy of Achievement, Academy of Achievement interview, Washington, D.C., 19 June 1999 source ↗
Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard Developmental biologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1995
I don’t think it’s misused yet, people are afraid of it might be misused but on the other hand, there is also value in finding out about the relation between several particular predispositions. You might be more careful if you are told that your genetic background is such that you shouldn’t eat fat in large amounts or so, it does help you change your life a little bit and so it’s not so bad, but it’s hard to find out which genetic background is causing these things.
Recorded Marika Griehsel, Interview at the 53rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, 30 June–4 July 2003, Nobel Prize Outreach, 1 July 2003 source ↗
John Lewis U.S. Representative from Georgia, 1987–2020; Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1963–1966
As a participant in the movement, as I was sitting in, I came to that point where I lost all sense of fear.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Chicago, 10 June 2004 source ↗
Olivia de Havilland Film actress; twice winner of the Academy Award for Best Actress
The loss of physical, financial, and psychological independence.
Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, March 2005 source ↗
Cybill Shepherd American actress and former model
Dying in a plane crash and having somebody else get top billing.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 June 2008 source ↗
David Hasselhoff American actor, singer, and television personality
Not working and not being able to continue to live this lifestyle.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 11 April 2009 source ↗

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