Terry Gross
Radio interviewer
Swiftly, painlessly, and old.
How would you like to die?
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be?
Identity & self
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
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.
Read incorrectly, that sounds like a threat. No thanks, Vanity Fair !
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 25 January 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 44 →
Sally Field
Actor
When I’m extremely old during a huge family celebration where everyone is playing games and giving pre-written toasts … to me.
Simon Boas
Aid worker; executive director of Jersey Overseas Aid
My pain is under control and I'm terribly happy - it sounds weird to say, but I'm as happy as I've ever been in my life. I used to think I'd rather be hit by the proverbial bus, but having a couple of months knowing this is coming has really helped me both do the boring 'death-min', but also get my thoughts and prepare myself, and feel so accepting of what's to come. It's been such a great bonus, actually.
T Bone Burnett
Musician and record producer
I would like to die in good health, at an old age, in a house on a mountain that looks out over the ocean, dreaming about everyone and everything I have had the impossible good fortune to have loved. Maybe Ralph Stanley is singing “Angel Band.”
More from George Saunders
View profile →Being aware and accepting of whatever the state of my mind happens to be at the moment (even if that state is unhappy).
I’d like to have a more generous, less anxious mind.
Pittsford, New York, writing my first book when our kids were small, riding my bike to work because we only had one car…that feeling of being needed and loved and vitally involved in something artistic that I didn’t fully understand, everything still lying ahead of us.
More on death & what remains
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- 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 happens when we die? 51 answers
- What would you like to leave your children? 44 answers
Also answered this
Judy Blume, Eugene Levy, Kazuo Ishiguro, Cory Taylor, Stephen Fry, Christopher Hitchens
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- All death & what remains questions
- The The Proust Questionnaire questionnaire — 5 questions from the same format
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