I think we become stars.
What happens when we die?
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
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.
I like the idea of being atoms that other people can breathe in, and fabulous worm food.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 21 October 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 51 →An accounting is given of our lives. Did you give more than you’ve taken? Hurt more people than you’ve helped?
I think we’re definitely gone, but I do think people leave traces everywhere from what they did in life, and live on and continue to make an impact through the ripple effect of that.
That’s the 64-million-dollar question.
More from Neil Gaiman
View profile →Imaginative, dull, amiable.
The idiocy of going to Skye from New Zealand in April 2020. All of a sudden, I’m turning on the news and hearing myself as an item. I have never been more mortified.
As someone who left the world slightly more interesting than he found it.
The only job I quit was, aged about 23, subediting a “men’s” magazine. My job was typing out readers’ pornographic fantasies. I started wishing people would reproduce by splitting down the middle.
My kids, and getting some of the stories I had in my head on to paper in a way that wasn’t too far removed from the thing I dreamed about writing.
My soon-to-be ex-wife, Amanda. I wish I’d been able to do whatever would have been necessary all the way back to keep us as a unit. Probably the worst thing I did was not tell her how miserable I was, certain that I could turn this around somehow.
More on death & what remains
- What would you like to be remembered for? 214 answers
- 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 would you like to leave your children? 44 answers
- How would you like to die? 44 answers
Also answered this
Jenny Diski, Tony Judt, Nick Frost, Rosalind Eleazar, Shobna Gulati, Esther Freud
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- All death & what remains questions
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