One question · 6 of 9 answers to it
Originally asked
Vox, to writers and thinkers, 9 Questions, 2017
This exact prompt is one of Vox's nine recurring questions about intellectual habits.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Developmental biologist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 1995
I think a very big curiosity. I’m very curious and I like to understand things and not only science but also other things where I just try to find out why things work or how things work.
Recorded · Nobel Prize Outreach · 2003
Co-founder and chief executive of Apple; co-founder of NeXT; chief executive of Pixar
One of the saints in my life is this woman named Imogene Hill, who was a fourth-grade teacher who taught this advanced class.
Recorded · Playboy · 1985
Co-founder and chief executive of Nubank
I wish I knew more about Clojure, which is the programming language we use most at Nubank.
Recorded · Sequoia Capital · 2018
Theoretical physicist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 1965
The questions of the students are often the source of new research. They often ask profound questions that I’ve thought about at times and then given up on, so to speak, for a while.
Recorded · Engineering and Science / Caltech Magazine · 1985
U.S. Representative from Georgia, 1987–2020; Chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee 1963–1966
I wanted to know. I asked a lot of questions and she would say, "Read, read."…So she inspired me a great deal.
Recorded · Explorations in Black Leadership, University of Virginia
Atmospheric chemist; Nobel laureate in Chemistry, 1995
I have also benefited from teaching; as I try to explain my views to students with critical and open minds, I find myself continually being challenged to go back and rethink ideas.
Recorded · Nobel Prize Outreach · 2007
Answers marked Recorded were said elsewhere and are quoted with the publication and date they came from. Those people have not joined — nobody here answers on anyone else's behalf.
Originally asked
Vox, to writers and thinkers, 9 Questions, 2017
Vox's fixed 9 Questions format asks this verbatim across respondents.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, 1978–2023
inversion frequently will solve problems which nothing else will solve.
Recorded · Speakola · 2007
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…
Recorded · Vox · 2017
Chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, 1970–2025
Ironically, though, this is also the purchase in which I made my biggest mistake - of a kind, however, never recognized on financial statements.
Recorded · Berkshire Hathaway Inc. · 1996
Originally asked
Vox, to writers and thinkers, 9 Questions, 2017
The exact question was part of every retrieved Vox 9 Questions installment.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
My mind is changing about being a mum. I got a dog and the way I feel about it is a lot, and I realise maybe I would want to be a mum.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2025
Editor and memoirist
I can’t remember when I read, or was told, that he considered it a good thing to spend a short time every day thinking about death, thus getting used to its inevitability and coming to…
Recorded · The Guardian · 2014
Last week, when I decided to rewrite the children’s book I’ve been working on.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2026
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.
Welsh actress, producer, and writer
My mother, Hannah: nearly 82, mother of four, homemaker, retired GP and knitter extraordinaire.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2018
English actor
Stacey Dooley. She does incredible documentaries – in one, she took spoiled British kids to the Philippines to work in a factory. It’s exactly what my kids need to watch.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2018
English actor
Amber, my aunt, and her boyfriend, Gian Luigi Valino – he has primary lateral sclerosis and she cares for him.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2012
Recorded for public figures, from the source their answers were taken from. Browse by era too.
Every question the bank can deal, in the order it was written. See all 126.
Andy Serkis, Barry Scheck, Beverley Knight, Bill Bryson, Brandon Sanderson, Charles Bernstein, Claire L. Evans, Clara Amfo, Cressida Cowell, Danny DeVito, Dominic Cooper, Edward Albee, Gary Barlow, Greta Scacchi, Hanna Tetteh, Imelda Staunton, Jerry Springer, Jim Findlay, Jodie Whittaker, John Cooper Clarke, kd lang, Marianne Faithfull, Matthew Kelly, Matthew Walker, Novak Djokovic, Okay Kaya, Pauline Black, Perez Hilton, Reece Shearsmith, Rob Lowe, Sam Neill, Shaggy, Simone Giertz, Song Yi Jeon, Sophia Loren, Steve Coogan, Suzanne Vega, Tania James, Tom Kerridge, Venkatraman Ramakrishnan
You are dealt a few questions at a time and answer the ones you want to. What you write gets a permanent address and keeps it. Rewrite it whenever you like and say why — the new version goes up beside the old one rather than over it, so changing your mind reads as thinking rather than as a reversal.
You write before you read. Other members' answers to a question stay shut until you have answered it or passed on it, because reading first changes what you would have said. Passing is free and it is permanent.
Most of what is here so far was said somewhere else and recorded with its source — a named person, a publication and a date, on every line. Nothing has been deleted.