My friend Fritha Goodey wouldn’t have committed suicide.
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I would have articulated aloud the comments I too often suppressed out of deference to arrogant, condescending, sexist bores.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 August 2017 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 203 →
Adam Lambert
American singer
I would try to work on being able to trust people more easily.
Jessica Brown Findlay
English actress
My password. [In 2014, Brown Findlay’s iCloud account was hacked.]
Heather Graham
American actress
I spent too many years being hard on myself, like a drill sergeant in my head. I thought that if I was hard on myself, I’d get more results, but I now know that’s not true.
More from Siri Hustvedt
View profile →The man who asked me directions on the subway seven years ago: I am so sorry for sending you to Queens rather than to the Bronx.
I have a penchant for happiness. I have experienced euphoria before a migraine, which may not count, but I have also felt immense happiness leaning back in a chair in sunlight, puttering in my garden, reading, dancing, immediately after giving birth and when writing.
The Blazing World.
I was a floor model briefly at Bloomingdale’s in New York in 1979. I hated it. When no one was watching, I would lock myself in the toilet and read.
More on failure & regret
- What has been your biggest disappointment? 366 answers
- Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? 209 answers
- What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? 122 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 122 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 69 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 36 answers
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Ralf Little, Ronald Harwood, Tim Rice, Sara Pascoe, Bill Bryson, Tracy-Ann Oberman
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