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.

Alex Honnold

Rock climber; first person to free solo El Capitan

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
I think when I was younger, I had a lot of the fears that, that you expect from people. Like I was kind of afraid of spiders and things like that. And I think with, you know, years of dealing with fear nonstop, they've all sort of fallen away. I, I mean, I guess my greatest fear is like public embarrassment or public performance, or like what I said earlier about opera singing I'm like, that is still for sure that would be a nightmare. And like, yeah, I could do it. But I would be so bummed.

Adam Grant, Re:Thinking with Adam Grant, TED, 20 September 2022 source ↗

Others on this question

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John Malkovich American actor
That the Proust Questionnaire will continue to be used by lazy, overworked journalists for another century or so (since you asked …).
Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, August 2013 source ↗

More from Alex Honnold

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Question Are you afraid of death? Death & what remains
I’ve had a couple of ex-girlfriends sort of accuse me of having a personality disorder! … No, I don’t know. I’ve always been afraid of death. I’ve never wanted to die. Last year, I watched this guy die in Red Rock. It was this horrible freak accident thing. He fell and he cracked his head and basically just bled out. That was the first time I’d ever actually seen a climbing accident like that. It was kind of sobering — he was even wearing a helmet — it was a reminder of how dangerous climbing can be if things go wrong even when you have all the ropes on.
Recorded The Talks, 6 February 2019 source ↗
Question If you could have a gigantic billboard anywhere, what would it say and why? Time & hindsight
Oh, I don’t know. I mean, like, just like, I don’t know, environmental propaganda or something. Or like the meat stuff. I’m like pretty stoked on all the vegetarian type of stuff now, just because it’s such an easy way to minimize your impact on the planet. And it’s just, you know, I mean, it just solves so many different environmental issues. But I don’t know.
Recorded Tim Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show, The Blog of Author Tim Ferriss, 1 January 2018 source ↗

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