Terry Gross: 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 Terry Gross said elsewhere, not written here

Living with severe chronic pain, or forgetting the name of the person I’m interviewing.

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

Others on this question

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 ↗

Maureen O'Hara Irish and American actress and singer

Not getting into heaven.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, July 2014 source ↗

Bruce Dickinson English heavy metal singer

Well, I’m not too happy about snakes. I also hate sand. It’s very inconvenient.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 July 2024 source ↗

Apathy, either from an audience, the people around me or myself.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 2 September 2023 source ↗

A glass of wine, a good dinner with my husband, and a day ahead of me without a deadline is close enough.

Recorded The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 1 September 2012 source ↗

The inability to stop talking about themselves when they’re not being interviewed.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, September 2012 source ↗

Their willingness to put up with my endless explanations about why I can’t see them because I’m under deadline.

Recorded The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 1 September 2012 source ↗

Swiftly, painlessly, and old.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 22 August 2012 source ↗

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