Death & what remains

How would you like to die?

43 answers answered between 2010 and 2024 one of 5 in The Proust Questionnaire

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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 17 Seventy and beyond 18
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Robert De Niro Actor
In my sleep. And I don’t think about it. It’ll be what it’ll be.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 19 February 2013 source ↗

Joan Rivers Comedian
Coming offstage after a five-minute standing ovation, falling into the arms of my lover, and having the doctor look at me and say, “This is impossible! She looks much too young to go!”

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 4 September 2014 source ↗

Diana Athill Editor and memoirist
That process depends on what you are dying of. The body can fail in ways that are extremely distressing, slowly and painfully, demanding much stoicism, or it can switch off with little more than a flash of dizziness. In my family we seem to have been uncommonly lucky in that respect. There was the 82-year-old uncle who was at a meet of the Norwich Stag Hounds, enjoying a drink with friends, when crash! And he fell off his horse, dead. There was the cousin in her eighties who fell dead as she was filling a kettle to make tea, and the other cousin, 98, who slipped away so gently that the sister who was holding her hand didn’t realise that she had stopped breathing.

Recorded The Guardian, 23 September 2014 source ↗

Oliver Sacks Neurologist and writer
It was this celestial splendor that suddenly made me realize how little time, how little life, I had left. My sense of the heavens’ beauty, of eternity, was inseparably mixed for me with a sense of transience — and death. ... I told my friends Kate and Allen, “I would like to see such a sky again when I am dying.” “We’ll wheel you outside,” they said.

Recorded The New York Times, Sunday Review, 24 July 2015 source ↗

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.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 10 March 2016 source ↗

Eugene Levy Actor and writer
In my sleep. In bed. With a half-eaten egg salad sandwich on my chest.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 8 November 2019 source ↗

John Lewis U.S. Representative from Georgia, 1987–2020; Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1963–1966
I don't want to die. I don't think I'm going to die…but we all have to die. Since I do, I hope I live on in the hearts and minds of people.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 6 December 2019 source ↗

Gloria Steinem Writer and feminist organiser
Sometimes when I’m on a plane, as I often am, the weather is rough and we’re worried about going down. I think: If I hold the hand of the person next to me, I’ll be holding everyone’s hand. Like my dear friend, the late Wilma Mankiller, principal chief of the Cherokee Nation, I want to know: I’m going to the other side of the mountain.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 24 September 2020 source ↗

Alice Waters Chef, restaurateur and food activist
Peacefully, knowing I’ll be composted in a mushroom suit.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 28 July 2021 source ↗

Rita Moreno Actor, singer and dancer
With a malicious grin that implies I know something you don’t.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 7 January 2022 source ↗

Lily Tomlin Comedian and actor
In my sleep, “dreaming android dreams of electric sheep.”

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 10 June 2022 source ↗

Bonnie Raitt Singer and guitarist
In my sleep in my 90s, after a great gig.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 28 September 2022 source ↗

Henry Marsh Neurosurgeon and writer
Sufficiently well to see Johnson and Truss and then two or three days later, she’s dead. I thought, that’s fantastic. That’s something to celebrate. That’s a great death.

Recorded Sirin Kale, The Guardian, 5 October 2022 source ↗

Julie Taymor 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, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 28 October 2022 source ↗

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.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 28 April 2023 source ↗

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