English model
Not reading my bank statements thoroughly enough!
Recorded · The Guardian · 2008
One question · 6 of 204 answers to it
What keeps you awake at night?
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A long-running fixed question in The Guardian's weekly Q&A questionnaire.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
It’s usually a slight feeling that, having got through the day, I didn’t get any time to do any writing or something creative – it was a lot of admin, exhaustion from that and rumination.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2026
British journalist
My daughter talking to her friends even though I thought I’d disabled her devices.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2021
American actress and producer
Worrying about not being able to go back to sleep.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2019
I worry about doing everything right with my kids.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2025
English rock musician
My metabolism. Ever since I was a little kid, I was always up halfway through the night.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2017
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.
What scares you about getting older?
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.
Having conversations with young people who you remember being born.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2025
Not feeling old but everyone treating you that way.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2023
Being alone and other people getting busier with families and life.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2023
What have you come to understand about what it means to be human?
Originally asked
Krista Tippett, to her guests, On Being
Krista Tippett uses this as a recurring, sometimes-closing On Being question; the wording is intentionally adapted to each guest.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Writer and facilitator; author of Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism
we’re just bags of water with the capacity to reason and spiritual callings.
Recorded · The On Being Project · 2022
Founder and chief executive of Acumen
One of the biggest lessons of my life, Krista, has been that we can’t separate the world into monsters and angels and that there’s nothing like loving people and knowing friends who played…
Recorded · The On Being Project · 2020
Civil-rights activist
There were so many needs for us to continue to work for freedom, because I didn’t think that we should have to be treated in the way we were, just for the sake of white supremacy, because…
Recorded · Academy of Achievement
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A verbatim standing question in The Guardian's rotating Q&A questionnaire, documented across respondents and years.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Too many times I had people try and make decisions for me. The assumption that I needed that was a big mistake!
Recorded · The Guardian · 2023
Bullying, flakiness, rudeness, lack of humility, being patronising and ungenerous.
Recorded · The Guardian · 2024
Theoretical physicist; Nobel laureate in Physics, 1965
I would like to add something that’s not essential to the science, but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool the layman when you’re talking as a scientist.
Recorded · Engineering and Science / Caltech Magazine · 1974
People, by what they do
- Science and medicine 105
- Arts and letters 1211
- Politics and public life 132
- Business and finance 70
- Technology 47
- Sport 109
Recorded for public figures, from the source their answers were taken from. Browse by era too.
Questions, by subject
- Identity & self 14
- Values & belief 13
- Change of mind 1
- Failure & regret 9
- Craft & work 36
- Money & investment 4
- Taste & recommendation 6
- Relationships 5
- Time & hindsight 8
- Death & what remains 13
- Daily life 9
- Attention & the world 8
Every question the bank can deal, in the order it was written. See all 126.
Some of the people here · A–Z
Find someone →Abigail Breslin, Alan Cumming, Alice Sheppard, Andrea Bocelli, Andy Murray, Athol Fugard, Bernadine Evaristo, Bronwyn Katz, Camille Paglia, Catherine O’Hara, Cory Taylor, Dan Harris, Danny Cipriani, David Ajala, Greg James, Jamie Hince, Jeremy Vine, Jimmy Savile, Kate Nash, Kiefer Sutherland, Lizzy McAlpine, Lucy Beaumont, Marjane Satrapi, Mark Bonnar, Mark Gatiss, Michael Douglas, Michelle Visage, Miho Hatori, Nick Cave, Rachel Maddow, Richard Ford, Rory Stewart, Rose McGowan, Shakin' Stevens, Tracy-Ann Oberman, Tyler Perry, Vanessa Redgrave, Werner Arber, Zoë Wanamaker, Zuzana Čaputová
Answers that stay at one address
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.
- People
- 1,679
- Answers
- 7,837
- Questions
- 126
- First said
- 1910–2026
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.