There are no more interviews.
What happens when we die?
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
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.
You have to go to the end of the line.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 May 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 51 →We go back from whence we came.
Jenny Diski
Novelist and essayist
I’d never been envious of those who believe in an afterlife until now. It would be so much cosier than dissolution. She’s gone to the next room. Nope, can’t manage it. She’s gone to dust and rubble. Gone nowhere. No where to go to. No she to go to it. Much easier to be convinced you will be met in Elysian fields by a thousand virgins, or drink from fountains of Manhattans. I can’t even get close to what they call faith, though I quite see Pascal had a point.
Hopefully we have life in the minds and hearts of the people we interacted with.
More from Russell Mael
View profile →One handsome dude.
Watching Ingmar Bergman’s The Seventh Seal.
The morality of stealing that red liquorice.
Shucking oysters one summer in Nice.
Is that the final mix?
Watching all of Fellini’s movies one summer.
More on death & what remains
- What would you like to be remembered for? 214 answers
- How close have you come to death? 209 answers
- What song would you like played at your funeral? 178 answers
- If you had only one day left to live, how would you spend it — and what would you deliberately avoid doing? 54 answers
- What would you like to leave your children? 44 answers
- How would you like to die? 44 answers
Also answered this
Nuala McGovern, Kate Humble, Jon Sopel, Kerry Godliman, Bobbi Brown, Richard Eyre
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All death & what remains questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject