Writer
I needed to physically be totally alone and be in a different place to get going.
Recorded · The Creative Independent · 2022
One question · 6 of 21 answers to it
How do you balance creative work with other responsibilities?
Originally asked
The Creative Independent, to working artists, its interview series
The Creative Independent repeatedly asks working artists how they divide time between creative practice and administrative, family, or second-job obligations.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Founder of CD Baby; author of Anything You Want
I am mostly full time dad and my time is mostly at the mercy of an awesome little boy. I write when I can.
Recorded · Roam Book Club · 2021
Author of Wild and Tiny Beautiful Things
There are many times for three months in a row I wrote every day, but there are also many times for three months in a row I didn't write a word.
Recorded · Marie Forleo
British actor
All the damn time, it comes with the territory. My family valiantly put up with most of them. Though the older I get, the bolder I am about saying no.
Recorded · Official London Theatre · 2012
visual artist and filmmaker
This process has also involved slowing down and refusing a certain amount of labor that has been imposed upon me as a Black woman in this country.
Recorded · Filmmaker Magazine · 2021
Naval aviator and astronaut; the first American in space and the fifth person to walk on the Moon
My wife and I have always tried to explain to the girls — even when I had to go off on nine-month cruises in the Mediterranean or in the Pacific — why I was doing it, and what it was all…
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1991
Answers marked Recorded were said elsewhere and are quoted with the publication and date they came from. Those people have not joined — nobody here answers on anyone else's behalf.
What keeps you awake at night?
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A long-running fixed question in The Guardian's weekly Q&A questionnaire.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Swedish musician
Nothing, really. But without little sleeping pills, I’d go crazy.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2020
British actor
If you have a nice drink before going to bed, you don’t stay awake at night. I like almost anything in a bottle.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2017
American rapper
Creating. When everyone goes to bed and then you have six or seven hours to create peacefully. I’ve become nocturnal.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2020
What scares you about getting older?
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A newer fixed question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Biologist and physician; Nobel laureate in chemistry for the discovery of ubiquitin-mediated protein degradation
You have to die of something. Let’s say we would be able to cure cancer, or Alzheimer, or cardiovascular diseases. And then what? Should we be young forever or healthy forever?
Recorded · Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings · 2014
Having regrets and not knowing what to do about them.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2026
Every time I play tennis I come back with a fresh injury.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2024
What have you come to understand about what it means to be human?
Originally asked
Krista Tippett, to her guests, On Being
Krista Tippett uses this as a recurring, sometimes-closing On Being question; the wording is intentionally adapted to each guest.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Neurosurgeon and writer
Everyone succumbs to finitude. I suspect I am not the only one who reaches this pluperfect state. Most ambitions are either achieved or abandoned; either way, they belong to the past.
Recorded · Stanford Medicine · 2015
Journalist and author of The Year of Living Biblically
I think part of the meaning of life is actually the search for the meaning of life. That may sound glib, but I truly believe it.
Recorded · Five Books · 2022
Historian of American Christianity; professor at Duke Divinity School
The movement has perfected a rarefied form of America’s addiction to self-rule, which denies much of our humanity: our fragile bodies, our finitude, our need to stare down our deaths (at…
Recorded · The New York Times · 2016
People, by what they do
- Science and medicine 105
- Arts and letters 1211
- Politics and public life 132
- Business and finance 70
- Technology 47
- Sport 109
Recorded for public figures, from the source their answers were taken from. Browse by era too.
Questions, by subject
- Identity & self 14
- Values & belief 13
- Change of mind 1
- Failure & regret 9
- Craft & work 36
- Money & investment 4
- Taste & recommendation 6
- Relationships 5
- Time & hindsight 8
- Death & what remains 13
- Daily life 9
- Attention & the world 8
Every question the bank can deal, in the order it was written. See all 126.
Some of the people here · A–Z
Find someone →Albie Sachs, Amartya Sen, Andrew Weil, Boris Becker, Charles Bernstein, Chris Rock, David Hockney, Fran Lebowitz, George Michael, Ian Wright, Jack Nicholson, Jacqueline Novogratz, James Patterson, Jeremy Deller, Joss Stone, Jürgen Klopp, Kate Nash, Kay Rosen, Khaled Hosseini, Koho Yamamoto, Lauren Groff, Lleyton Hewitt, Malala Yousafzai, Mike Krzyzewski, Patricia Smith, Pedro Almodóvar, Rahul Dravid, Reinhold Messner, Ron Dennis, Rosie Stockton, Samira Ahmed, Sandy Tran, Serge Pizzorno, Sharon Stone, Sue Johnston, Tabita Rezaire, Tanni Grey-Thompson, Tom Fletcher, Warwick Davis, Willem Dafoe
Answers that stay at one address
You are dealt a few questions at a time and answer the ones you want to. What you write gets a permanent address and keeps it. Rewrite it whenever you like and say why — the new version goes up beside the old one rather than over it, so changing your mind reads as thinking rather than as a reversal.
You write before you read. Other members' answers to a question stay shut until you have answered it or passed on it, because reading first changes what you would have said. Passing is free and it is permanent.
- People
- 1,679
- Answers
- 8,159
- Questions
- 126
- First said
- 1910–2026
Most of what is here so far was said somewhere else and recorded with its source — a named person, a publication and a date, on every line. Nothing has been deleted.