British actor
I need to do more whale-watching. I must learn to play the guitar. I would like to play Uncle Vanya, King Lear and a panto Dame.
Recorded · Official London Theatre · 2012
One question · 6 of 24 answers to it
What are you still hoping to finish?
Songwriter and musician
The songs aren't all written. ... You don't know where they're going to go. That's the fun of the job. There's the usual malarkey, the usual gags, the usual stuff.
Recorded · The New York Times Magazine · 2003
Essayist, critic and journalist
There is an even longer shot that I do propose to attempt even though its likely efficacy lies at the outer limits of probability.
Recorded · Vanity Fair · 2010
Civil-rights activist
I would have to take longer than a minute to give my whole synopsis of my life, but I want to let you know that all of us should be free and equal and have equal opportunity and that is…
Recorded · Academy of Achievement
39th President of the United States, 1977–1981; Governor of Georgia 1971–1975
As far as the Carter Center's concerned, I would like to see guinea worm completely eradicated before -- before I die. I'd like for the last guinea worm to die before I do. ...
Recorded · CNN · 2015
Staff writer at The New Yorker; essayist
That’s the book I hope to get written sometime in the next ten years.
Recorded · mind your monde · 2015
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.
If you had only one day left to live, how would you spend it — and what would you deliberately avoid doing?
Scottish singer and songwriter; lead vocalist of Garbage
By the sea.
Recorded · Clash · 2012
Short-story writer; teacher at the Michener Center for Writers
I think that dying might bring about a profound loneliness. I don’t feel lonely in life, but I do think this would be a very hard discovery at the end.
Recorded · The Believer · 2026
Singer, songwriter and guitarist; lead vocalist of Pixies
Primping mostly. It’s Sophia Loren! So I would clean up a bit and the first thing I would check are my toenails. I would have a full shave and make sure I had moisturised everywhere.
Recorded · Clash · 2010
What is the book you have given most as a gift, and why?
Co-founder of Microsoft; co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
I read Stephen Pinker's The Better Angels of Our Nature a few years ago and got to talk to him about it after, which was a lot of fun.
Recorded · TIME · 2017
Pharmaceutical chemist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 2015
In Ge Hong's A Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies (肘后备急方), I noticed one sentence "A handful of Qinghao immersed in two liters of water, wring out the juice and drink it all" (青蒿一握,…
Recorded · Nobel Prize Outreach · 2015
Atmospheric chemist; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1995
It was probably a series of biographies of scientists like Pasteur, or even earlier ones — Leeuwenhoek inventing the microscope and Madame Curie.
Recorded · Academy of Achievement · 1996
What purchase of $100 or less has most positively impacted your life in the last six months?
Novelist and screenwriter; author of The School for Good and Evil
This is easy. It’s called Mother Dirt. It clears your skin, and it cost $49.00. My skin was a hot mess for most of my adolescence and into my 20’s.
Recorded · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2018
Cook and inventor; co-author of Modernist Cuisine, co-founder of ChefSteps
I’ll give two answers. I bought a new electric teakettle. I used to have all the stovetop kettles.
Recorded · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2018
Journalist and author of The Year of Living Biblically
That is a good question. Well, one thing I do love is my elastic shoelaces. ...
Recorded · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2018
People, by what they do
- Science and medicine 105
- Arts and letters 1211
- Politics and public life 132
- Business and finance 70
- Technology 47
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Recorded for public figures, from the source their answers were taken from. Browse by era too.
Questions, by subject
- Identity & self 14
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- Change of mind 1
- Failure & regret 9
- Craft & work 36
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- 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 →Adam Peaty, Alison Goldfrapp, Ardal O'Hanlon, Arsène Wenger, Bronwyn Katz, Cal Ripken Jr., David Arquette, David Trimble, Elie Wiesel, Emily Mortimer, Emma Bunton, Ferdinando Cito Filomarino, Francis Collins, Gary Numan, Imelda Staunton, Iris Apfel, Irrfan Khan, Jimmy Carter, John Grant, Julien Macdonald, Kathleen Turner, Leona Lewis, Marc Almond, Mario Molina, Muhammad Yunus, Natalie Mering, Nigel Havers, Penny Lancaster, Peter Sarsgaard, Rob da Bank, Samantha Morton, Sarah Hadland, Shimon Peres, Shobna Gulati, Steffi Graf, Sundar Pichai, Tim Rice, Tobias Lütke, Tony Fadell, Whoopi Goldberg
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
- 8,240
- 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.