When I’m extremely old during a huge family celebration where everyone is playing games and giving pre-written toasts … to me.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 10 March 2016 source ↗
The question
What kind of death would you consider a good one?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.
Others on this question
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George Saunders
Short-story writer and novelist
Read incorrectly, that sounds like a threat. No thanks, Vanity Fair !
Lily Tomlin
Comedian and actor
In my sleep, “dreaming android dreams of electric sheep.”
Cory Taylor
Novelist and screenwriter
As far as I can tell, I’ll either succumb to some opportunistic infection, for which I’ve refused antibiotics in advance, or, having similarly declined forced feeding, I’ll starve to death. ... I don’t know how long it takes to die of starvation, or whether it hurts, but I dread it, just as I dread my sons watching me go like that. Because that is what they will remember, their mother reduced to a bag of bones.
John Lewis
U.S. Representative from Georgia, 1987–2020; Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1963–1966
I don't want to die. I don't think I'm going to die…but we all have to die. Since I do, I hope I live on in the hearts and minds of people.
More from Sally Field
View profile →A bumpy flight … or driving with my son Sam, who drives great, but I still can’t believe he’s old enough.
That they won’t let me hide.
Being inside and watching really bad weather outside … and, if it’s after 5:30 P.M., with a glass of Chardonnay in hand.
I’d be more patient, which I didn’t consider a virtue until right this moment.
Malala Yousafzai, Martina Navratilova, Misty Copeland, and Hillary Clinton.
Overall I’d have to say my earnestness.
More on death & what remains
- How would you want people to remember you? 213 answers
- How close have you come to dying? 209 answers
- What song would you want played at your funeral? 178 answers
- If you had only one day left, how would you spend it — and what would you deliberately avoid? 54 answers
- What do you believe happens when we die? 50 answers
- What would you most want to leave your children? 44 answers
Also answered this
Pedro Almodóvar, Julie Taymor, Audra McDonald, Lily Tomlin, Rita Moreno, Willem Dafoe
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