Michael Stipe
American singer
A page from Jim Morrison’s final notebook – I bought it as a birthday gift for a friend.
Aside from a property, what is the most expensive thing you have bought?
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
What is the worst thing anyone has said to you?
Failure & regret
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's weekly The Q&A repeatedly uses this standing prompt, with minor contractions and word-order variation.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
All my clothes are secondhand, but I did buy a pair of new silver Vivienne Westwood shoes to get married in, which I still have.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 March 2023 source ↗
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John Waters
American filmmaker
It's bad taste to brag about money.
Olivia Williams
British actress
An electric car.
The cheapest available Volvo.
More from Maggie O'Farrell
View profile →How long have you got? I have written a memoir and the subtitle is Seventeen Brushes with Death.
Interrupting or talking over people. As a stammerer, I am particularly alert to this.
To keep going and never give up, and to enjoy it to the absolute full because, at any moment, the curtain can fall.
I started stammering badly the first time I was on live radio, on Woman’s Hour on Radio 4. When I think about it now it brings me out in a cold sweat.
Effervescence in the soul.
“You’ll never walk again.” This was when I was eight or nine and recovering from viral encephalitis.
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