Nothing: I live in the now.
What scares you about getting older?
Question
What happens when we die?
Death & what remains
Question
What is your worst intellectual habit?
Craft & work
Question
When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
Change of mind
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A newer fixed question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I understand that you lose the register of hearing that enables you to hear crickets, and when I can’t hear crickets in the summer I’ll be really sad.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 March 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 61 →Nothing. I survived a cancer scare at 60, so I am just overjoyed to be here.
Not to be able to do the things that you take for granted, like running up the tube steps or going somewhere under your own steam.
Pain and loneliness.
More from Sarah Perry
View profile →I have never been able to become an atheist and, even though I know it is completely irrational and cannot be backed up, I think when I die I’m going to glory.
I’ve a deplorable tendency to become entrenched in my own prejudices: If I dislike an artist, an art form, or an idea (jazz, ballet, certain kinds of fiction) it is extremely difficult to get me to change my mind, and all evidence presented to the contrary will be discarded and very likely mocked. Of course, nobody suffers but me.
I am so obdurate I do not change my mind.
My A-level results in 1998. I flunked my history A-level and lost my place at Cambridge. It broke my heart for years; now I’m really glad, because I pull out the whole “I went to a polytechnic” thing. But at the time for a teenager who was rather pleased with herself, it was absolutely devastating.
Like it’s worth being alive.
Impatient, ambitious and happy.
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