Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 20 December 2025 source ↗
That we are all no more and no less than a single thread in a gigantic web of life. What we do and how we behave has repercussions for the entire web.
That you get out of life what you put in. When you grow up on a farm you literally reap what you sow.
To know thyself, as Shakespeare said.
Sacrifice the self and you will gain it. Serve the self and you will lose it.
Lemn Sissay. What happened to him and what he’s done with his life is extraordinary.
A missionary in Africa – I think that was Sunday school-based.
“You’ll never, ever work.” When you are young and full of hopes and dreams it’s devastating. I am just grateful that I thought: “Well, I’m going to try.”
Very impatient, bossy, always late.
Years ago, I was trying to get with one of the big agencies and I cobbled together a VHS tape of me in adverts and sobbing in The Bill, and took it United Agents for the attention of Dallas Smith. A week later I went back and said, “Has she looked at the tape?” And they were, like, “Dallas is a he, no he hasn’t and he doesn’t want to,” and handed it back to me.
Laziness, lack of empathy, lack of humour.
Tom Allen, David Lynch, Andrew Ridgeley, Edmund Hillary, Tony Judt, Paul Kalanithi
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