Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 April 2026 source ↗
We are too often advised to live life to the fullest. That’s too much pressure. The key is to find joy and poignancy in the quiet and mundane. Life is lived between the so-called big moments.
It occurred to me that at one point it was like I had two diseases – one was Alzheimer's and the other was knowing I had Alzheimer's. There were times when I thought I'd have been much happier not knowing, just accepting that I'd lost brain cells and one day they'd probably grow back or whatever. It is better to know, though, and better for it to be known, because it has got people talking, which I rather think was what I had in mind.
That life is tough and unfair; that life is beautiful.
Compare and despair. Comparing yourself with someone else or what someone else is doing or what someone else has is a recipe for sadness. What matters is who you are and what you want.
I wanted to play for Tottenham.
Tottenham this season.
I worked on a trawler and I was seasick the whole time.
Exultation, fear, quiet comfort and even hate.
Rock climbing in Oslo. During abseiling, I hadn’t tied a knot at the end of the rope and almost slid out. I saw the end of the rope at the last second, so I stopped abseiling.
As a nice guy, but I’m not sure that is going to happen.
Christopher Hitchens, Clive James, Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Harlan Coben, Jack Whitehall, Jane Asher
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