Jia Tolentino
Writer
I act like a hopeful person, but I think that hope is based on having zero expectations.
What do you need to believe in order to get through the day?
Question
What is the book you have given most as a gift, and why?
Taste & recommendation
Question
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure?
Failure & regret
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
When was the last time you changed your mind about something?
Change of mind
Question
What advice would you give your twenty-year-old self, and what should they ignore?
Time & hindsight
Question
Which writers or artists most influenced your work?
Taste & recommendation
Originally asked
Vox, to writers and thinkers, 9 Questions, 2017
Vox used this exact prompt throughout its named 9 Questions series on intellectual habits.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I guess you’ve just got to take each day at a time
Rachel Cooke, Interview, The Guardian, 10 June 2023 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 21 →
David Lynch
Film director, screenwriter and painter
Transcendental Meditation, it’s obviously the most important thing to do day in and day out. Transcending is the key to a better and better life, and this idea is catching on more and more in the world.
Recorded
Asaad Saad, Maharishi University of Management commencement Q&A, TIME, 27 June 2016
source ↗
Kurt Vonnegut
Novelist and essayist
Well, again, getting back to Nietzsche’s statement, as a person of deep faith, I obviously believe in something in the end. I don’t know what it is, but it’s a great big something.
Ja’Tovia Gary
visual artist and filmmaker
It requires me to be in prayer and meditation daily, or else I will literally spiral out. It’s something that I put at the forefront of my life.
More from Richard Ford
View profile →Touchstone books….I don’t know. So Long, See You Tomorrow; The Moviegoer; A Fan’s Notes; Alice Munro’s stories.
It just matters how you respond to that having your confidence shaken, that makes you what you are.
I just lack the basic fact-finding instinct.
Based on how the scene felt I completely switched the dynamics.
Marry somebody you love and who thinks you being a writer’s a good idea.
I’d read Something Happened, by Joe Heller; I’d read “A Fan’s Notes,” by Frederick Exley; and I’d read The Moviegoer, by Walker Percy.
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- What important truth do very few people agree with you on? 33 answers
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Also answered this
Kurt Vonnegut, Jia Tolentino, David Hare, David Lynch, Tony Judt, Bill Clinton
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