What kind of death would you consider a good one?

43 answers answered between 2003 and 2024 one of 5 in The Proust Questionnaire

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.

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Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Read by field Everyone Science and medicine 2 Arts and letters 36 Politics and public life 4 Business and finance 1

Read by age Any age In their forties 4 In their fifties 4 In their sixties 16 Seventy and beyond 18

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Neil Patrick Harris Actor

Quickly and by surprise. I don’t want the specter of death to linger.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 17 February 2015 source ↗

Zadie Smith Novelist and essayist

Oblivious to the event or on the brink of a genuine religious conversion.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 4 November 2016 source ↗

Karl Ove Knausgård Novelist

Self-combusting at a very late age.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 29 December 2017 source ↗

Nobody has answered this one yet.