Songwriter and musician
Somebody who won't go to the doctor for a normal checkup is fearful and nervous. ... But once you find out what it's like on the other side, you can go beyond fear.
Recorded · The New York Times Magazine · 2003
One question · 6 of 22 answers to it
Are you afraid of death?
Originally asked
The Talks, to its interviewees, its interview series
The Talks asks this directly or through an equivalent risk-and-mortality formulation across interviews.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Aid worker; executive director of Jersey Overseas Aid
I'm sort of - not looking forward to my final day - of course that's the wrong way to see it. But I'm kind of curious about it, and I'm happy and I'm ready.
Recorded · BBC News · 2024
Neurosurgeon and writer
It was fear of suffering before dying, and of, you know, lingering on, being in a hospital bed. And I hate hospitals, always have done.
Recorded · NPR · 2023
Rock climber; first person to free solo El Capitan
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.
Recorded · The Talks · 2019
Political strategist and pollster; architect of New Labour
From the moment I resolved and reconciled things with Gail the fear went. I don't feel I've got any fear now. I think acceptance is the key. If you accept death, fear disappears.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2011
Essayist, critic and journalist
The chief side effect of this pain is numbness in the extremities, filling me with the not irrational fear that I shall lose the ability to write.
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2012
Answers marked Recorded were said elsewhere and are quoted with the publication and date they came from. Those people have not joined — nobody here answers on anyone else's behalf.
How would you like to die?
Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
A fixed final question in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire, repeated verbatim across respondent pages.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Novelist and essayist
One thing I state as soon as we’re out of the door: ‘Under no circumstances is anyone to say that I lost a battle with cancer. Or that I bore it bravely.
Recorded · London Review of Books · 2014
Photographer
Quickly, without warning, maybe even in my sleep, and while we're putting in requests: before I lose my mind and my ability to gallop across the countryside on horseback.
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2018
Actor
How doesn’t matter—it’s when that matters. When I’m ready!
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2014
What happens when we die?
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring late-stage question in The Guardian Q&A, with materially different answers on publisher-hosted pages.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I don’t know and I don’t really care – I’ll be dead.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2024
I don’t know and I don’t really care, because I’ll be dead, so it won’t really matter.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2024
I think we’re definitely gone, but I do think people leave traces everywhere from what they did in life, and live on and continue to make an impact through the ripple effect of that.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2026
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Originally asked
Vanity Fair, to its interview subject, The Proust Questionnaire
Verbatim recurring item in Vanity Fair's Proust Questionnaire; two publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
When the coffee kicks in early in the morning and I’m on the couch with my dogs, reading the paper.
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2009
Novelist, poet and critic
A canoe, mixed sun and cloud, no deadlines in sight.
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2006
I don’t know about perfect, but a creamy scoop of green-tea ice cream comes fairly close.
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2015
People, by what they do
- Science and medicine 105
- Arts and letters 1211
- Politics and public life 132
- Business and finance 70
- Technology 47
- Sport 109
Recorded for public figures, from the source their answers were taken from. Browse by era too.
Questions, by subject
- Identity & self 14
- Values & belief 13
- Change of mind 1
- Failure & regret 9
- Craft & work 36
- Money & investment 4
- Taste & recommendation 6
- Relationships 5
- Time & hindsight 8
- Death & what remains 13
- Daily life 9
- Attention & the world 8
Every question the bank can deal, in the order it was written. See all 126.
Some of the people here · A–Z
Find someone →Allie Rowbottom, Andrea Martin, Betty White, Bill Gates, Ciarán Hinds, Corazon Aquino, David Yow, Dawn O’Porter, DJ Khaled, Ed O'Brien, FLAPSS Admin, Gertrude B. Elion, Gino D'Acampo, Jacob Collier, Jean-Jacques Burnel, Jean Paul Gaultier, Jesse Jackson, Jim Findlay, Kevin Shields, Kylie Minogue, Lena Headey, Loraine James, Mario Molina, Martha Nussbaum, Matt Smith, Mel Giedroyc, Mohamed ElBaradei, Nicolaas Bloembergen, Omid Djalili, Perfume Genius, Rita Moreno, Robert Glenister, Sally Mann, Sam Shepard, Sarah Silverman, Shimon Peres, Tom Warrior, Wayne Koestenbaum, Willie Mays, Yves Bonnefoy
Answers that stay at one address
You are dealt a few questions at a time and answer the ones you want to. What you write gets a permanent address and keeps it. Rewrite it whenever you like and say why — the new version goes up beside the old one rather than over it, so changing your mind reads as thinking rather than as a reversal.
You write before you read. Other members' answers to a question stay shut until you have answered it or passed on it, because reading first changes what you would have said. Passing is free and it is permanent.
- People
- 1,679
- Answers
- 8,228
- Questions
- 126
- First said
- 1910–2026
Most of what is here so far was said somewhere else and recorded with its source — a named person, a publication and a date, on every line. Nothing has been deleted.