Lionel Shriver
American author
A selection of single paragraphs that perfectly capture something I’ve thought or felt, even if it’s shameful or perverse.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Failure & regret
Question
What keeps you awake at night?
Daily life
Question
How close have you come to death?
Death & what remains
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
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.
As health minister, I brought in breast and cervical cancer screening. And in 1994 I called the first debate on gay rights for a quarter-century and we got the age of consent down to 18. There are pubs in Brighton where I still can’t pay for a drink.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 17 June 2017 source ↗
Others on this question
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Karamo Brown
American television host, personality and actor
Not giving up on myself. As a gay black man things are, at times, more difficult.
Getting to 39 without having a filling in my teeth.
Katherine Parkinson
English actor
I went to a state school, so had to learn ancient Greek from scratch at Oxford.
More from Edwina Currie
View profile →I am happy now.
Not becoming chancellor.
Anxiety. Usually the best response is to think hard about things, work up some solutions and then go to sleep.
Brighton, 1984. I was in another hotel just a few yards away.
I would be richer, I’d have beaten Mrs Thatcher’s ban on women in the cabinet, and I would be a dame.
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