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.

Recorded Olivia de Havilland said elsewhere, not written here
The deception and exploitation of the naïve and defenseless.

Vanity Fair, 7 February 2005 source ↗

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Anne Enright Novelist and short-story writer
I find it really interesting the way people are drawn to power, usually male power, sometimes in its dark mode. I wonder what they get from it. My experience of bastards is that there is very little material benefit gained from being in their company, though you feel there might be, any minute. Or you get something for a while and then the polarity switches. It’s a huge con. Trump made the mechanism clear – in this, I think he is a timely figure.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 September 2024 source ↗

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Question Which writers or artists most influenced your work? Taste & recommendation
Thrust into my profession without any training whatsoever, I had to just flounder and just find my way. It was an agonizing experience. It’s like jumping off a diving board in the Olympic contest without knowing how to swim or dive, and I just had to find my way. So one day, I said to Jimmy Cagney, “Jimmy, what is acting?” and he said, “I don’t know.” He said, “All I can tell you is whatever you say, mean it,” and I thought that marvelous counsel.
Recorded Academy of Achievement interview, Washington, D.C., 5 October 2006 source ↗

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