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
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.
Co-founder and chief executive of Apple; co-founder of NeXT; chief executive of Pixar
I've always felt that death is the greatest invention of life.
Recorded · Smithsonian Institution · 1995
Editor and memoirist
These matters have become discussable with one’s friends, not, of course, as a frequent part of gossip over lunch in the dining room (our only communal occasion) but from time to time,…
Recorded · The Guardian · 2014
Film critic
I know it is coming, and I do not fear it, because I believe there is nothing on the other side of death to fear. I hope to be spared as much pain as possible on the approach path.
Recorded · Salon · 2011
Novelist and essayist
Missing a few months of feeling awful, being dead, versus not missing those months of feeling awful.
Recorded · London Review of Books · 2015
Novelist and essayist
I don’t fucking know. I keep thinking I’ll die. Why do you think I smoke so much?
Recorded · McSweeney’s Internet Tendency · 2002
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.
Singer and guitarist
In my sleep in my 90s, after a great gig.
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2022
Comedian and actor
In my sleep, “dreaming android dreams of electric sheep.”
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2022
Theatre and film director
When I am ready. When I have had enough. When I can no longer give anything. When I can no longer appreciate the small beauties. Without pain or remorse.
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2022
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.
You reach a certain point in life and suddenly know a lot of dead people, and I’ve noticed you don’t stop getting to know people who are dead. Those relationships continue and I like that.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2026
Earthly life is merely the infancy of our soul. What comes after physical death is, I imagine, like returning home.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2024
Gardener and broadcaster
I hope that it exists. I'm not sure I can fit everything in before then.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2005
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.
Having the opportunity to contribute and serve.
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2019
Cookery writer and shop owner
Sundays in Paris with Jeffrey. We go to the Sunday market, make a nice lunch, drink a big bottle of Burgundy, and then take a long delicious nap. Heaven.
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2016
To sit by a clear river on a warm day in early July with the smell of cut grass in the air.
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2010
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 →Adele Parks, Allyson Felix, Andrew O’Hagan, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Beth Ditto, Brooke Shields, Bruno Tonioli, Chaka Khan, Danny Elfman, Derek Sivers, Dominique Dawes, Esther Freud, Francis Ford Coppola, Gillian Anderson, Grace Hopper, Ini Archibong, Isabella Rossellini, James Earl Jones, Johanna Konta, John Grisham, John McCain, Joshua Ferris, Julie Andrews, Keren Woodward, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, Lesley Sharp, Luke Pritchard, Marianne Faithfull, Max Whitlock, Michael Douglas, Paul Kalanithi, Rana el Kaliouby, Richard Schiff, Rita Dove, Sarah Waters, Sharleen Spiteri, Shaun Ryder, Susan Calman, Thomas Hooper, Tony Cragg
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
- 8,155
- 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.