The question
Which trait in yourself do you like least?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's The Q&A has retained this Proust-derived prompt from at least 2007 through 2026, and ABC independently put it to the Obamas in 2011.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
My tendency to be avoidant.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 April 2026 source ↗
I talk over people all the time.
Self-centredness.
Craving the kind of success I pretend to despise.
Maxi-multitasking.
Crashing in an aeroplane into an ocean at night.
An inability to be authentic.
Being alive on Earth is challenging and I like to believe that whatever happens after is filled with peace and ease.
To myself for diminishing my gut feelings until quite recently.
All of the anxious thoughts that you are able to escape during the day that somehow know when you are lying down to relax.
In my 20s I was in a show called The Unauthorised Autobiography of Samantha Brown. The actor who played my dad messed up his lines and it made me laugh so hard that I ended up peeing my pants.
Cybill Shepherd, Ina Garten, Courtney Pine, Ed Koch, Mel Brooks, Vera Wang
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