Death & what remains

How would you like to die?

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

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.

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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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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 ↗

Christopher Hitchens Essayist, critic and journalist
And even if my voice goes before I do, I shall continue to write polemics against religious delusions, at least until it’s hello darkness my old friend. In which case, why not cancer of the brain? As a terrified, half-aware imbecile, I might even scream for a priest at the close of business, though I hereby state while I am still lucid that the entity thus humiliating itself would not in fact be “me.” (Bear this in mind, in case of any later rumors or fabrications.)

Recorded Vanity Fair, 2 September 2010 source ↗

Danielle Steel Novelist
Peacefully, in good physical health, sound of mind, still active, at a great age, with my children around me.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 26 June 2012 source ↗

Dolly Parton American singer-songwriter, actress and businesswoman
Singing onstage—and everyone walking around me saying, “Look how happy she looks.”

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 24 October 2012 source ↗

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.”

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 17 December 2013 source ↗

Diane Keaton Actor and director
Like? I have no soft spot, fondness, admiration, respect, attraction, or esteem for death. I am not taken with it or infatuated by it. I carry no torch, have no crush, take no shine to the word or action of death. I don’t have the hots for it, and I don’t dig it, either.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 5 May 2014 source ↗

Jenny Diski Novelist and essayist
One thing I state as soon as we’re out of the door: ‘Under no circumstances is anyone to say that I lost a battle with cancer. Or that I bore it bravely. I am not fighting, losing, winning or bearing.’ I will not personify the cancer cells inside me in any form. I reject all metaphors of attack or enmity in the midst, and will have nothing whatever to do with any notion of desert, punishment, fairness or unfairness, or any kind of moral causality.

Recorded London Review of Books, 11 September 2014 source ↗

John Mellencamp Singer and songwriter
I need a long and lingering death to make sure that I have time to have a deathbed conversion.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 18 December 2015 source ↗

Cory Taylor Novelist and screenwriter
As far as I can tell, I’ll either succumb to some opportunistic infection, for which I’ve refused antibiotics in advance, or, having similarly declined forced feeding, I’ll starve to death. ... I don’t know how long it takes to die of starvation, or whether it hurts, but I dread it, just as I dread my sons watching me go like that. Because that is what they will remember, their mother reduced to a bag of bones.

Recorded Edited extract from Dying: A Memoir, Text Publishing, The Guardian, 17 May 2016 source ↗

Gayle King Broadcaster
I’d like to die anytime after the age of 90—in my sleep!

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 5 July 2016 source ↗

Sally Mann Photographer
Quickly, without warning, maybe even in my sleep, and while we're putting in requests: before I lose my mind and my ability to gallop across the countryside on horseback.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 2 March 2018 source ↗

Hans Zimmer Film composer
Showing off onstage, with everyone laughing and applauding.

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

George Saunders Short-story writer and novelist
Read incorrectly, that sounds like a threat. No thanks, Vanity Fair !

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 25 January 2023 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.

Recorded Vanity Fair, The Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 9 March 2023 source ↗

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