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.
Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 28 October 2022 source ↗
The question
What kind of death would you consider a good one?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.
Others on this question
View all 43 →
Judy Blume
Novelist
Really? Okay, if I have enough time I might go to Switzerland and drink the drink. I believe in euthanasia. What we do for our beloved pets, we should be able to do for our beloved humans or ourselves.
Terry Pratchett
Novelist
I remember what George said and vowed that rather than let Alzheimer's take me, I would take it. I would live my life as ever to the full and die, before the disease mounted its last attack, in my own home, in a chair on the lawn, with a brandy in my hand to wash down whatever modern version of the "Brompton cocktail" some helpful medic could supply. And with Thomas Tallis on my iPod, I would shake hands with Death.
Recorded
Edited extract from the Richard Dimbleby Lecture, Shaking Hands With Death, Royal College of Physicians, broadcast on BBC1 on 1 February 2010, The Guardian, 2 February 2010
source ↗
Kazuo Ishiguro
Novelist and screenwriter; Nobel laureate in Literature, 2017
Like Joel McCrea’s character at the end of the movie Ride the High Country. (He says something about “entering his house justified,” sits up to take a last look at the scenery, then rolls contentedly out of the frame.) Or like Bill Nighy’s character at the end of our film Living.
Stephen Fry
Actor, writer and broadcaster
Over two weeks, in a pleasant fug of palliative morphine if necessary. Just time to say a cheerful good-bye to everyone.
More from Julie Taymor
View profile →Love of fun and food and great conversation.
A fall day on the beach with Elliot and my dog, Luna, and the sea, sand, and sky.
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