Margaret Atwood
Novelist, poet and critic
Long, lingering dementia, followed by death from choking on a fishbone.
What scares you about getting older?
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
Which book are you ashamed not to have read?
Taste & recommendation
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Question
What would you like to leave your children?
Death & what remains
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A newer fixed question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Not being able to perform adequately.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 12 April 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
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Mario Molina
Atmospheric chemist; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1995
Certainly not. As a young child, I remember just dreaming about the Nobel Prize, but that was just a dream. It’s not something I would have ever thought was possible for me.
Geoffrey Rush
Australian actor
It’s not sudden.
I don’t want to get into an early death spiral, when you’re scaling down your life unnecessarily because you’ve already been there or done that. I never want to stop adventuring.
More from Pauline Black
View profile →I’m argumentative.
Nineteen Eighty-Four. I always meant to read it before 1984, and once 1984 had passed I didn’t see the point.
I fell asleep in a room that had an oil heater and it filled with carbon monoxide and, if it hadn’t been for my husband, Terry, I would have died.
I was called the N-word in Romford, by someone stepping off a train as I was getting on.
I don’t have children. I will leave my nieces money because girls need money of their own. Anything to make women independent.
An umbilical cord.
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