Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's Q&A repeatedly uses this prompt, sometimes dropping 'living' while retaining the same comparative judgment.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Proust Questionnaire, Vanity Fair, 18 September 2006 source ↗
My father, because he's a positive man with an enormous amount of compassion. My mother passed away four days ago.
My husband, Lincoln, for getting sober with me. He turned his own life around to turn mine around. We didn’t do AA, we anchored each other.
My older sister, Jeanne. We fought when we were kids, but she is so entirely capable.
In 2010 there are slim pickings.
I don’t know. Probably Alice, maybe. But we were contemporaries, Alice Munro. I think it was probably most in poetry. I was of that age to get influenced. After a while, you don’t get influenced because your brain has turned to cement.
Where to begin? How about working the archery range at the Sportsman’s Show in 1956? “The pointy part of the arrow goes at the front.” Or going door-to-door in 1963, when I was a questionnaire re-writer for a market research company, asking a 36-page questionnaire about bowel movements for a laxative company. “No one is going to answer 36 pages on that!” I bleated. “They’ll kick me out after three pages!” “Ah, but those who don’t,” they said – “those are our target market!”
A canoe, mixed sun and cloud, no deadlines in sight.
The only way out is through.
Of a painless disease, with a month’s warning, on a spring day, with some good news in hand.
Of dying, only if painful and protracted, or if I get stuck inside an inert body. I would also not wish to be trapped in a jar.
David Hare, Judith Kerr, Paul Theroux, Gok Wan, Carrie Fisher, Danielle Steel
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