Warm, intelligent, accommodating.
How would you describe yourself in three words?
Question
Whom do you read even though you disagree with them?
Attention & the world
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
What scares you about getting older?
Time & hindsight
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
What is your worst intellectual habit?
Craft & work
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
The Guardian's weekly The Q&A repeatedly uses this exact standing prompt.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Impatient, ambitious and happy.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 14 March 2026 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 111 →Driven, sensitive and playful.
Eager to learn.
Loving, considerate and loyal.
More from Sarah Perry
View profile →I often hate-read the Daily Mail. It’s the worst of media and the worst of mankind distilled into one publication and in some ways it feels a moral duty to be familiar with it. Too often we all bolt ourselves into an echo chamber, which I think lacks courage, and can lead to a kind of intellectual conceitedness.
I’m monstrously judgmental. It’s like talking to the pope.
Like it’s worth being alive.
I understand that you lose the register of hearing that enables you to hear crickets, and when I can’t hear crickets in the summer I’ll be really sad.
Not being loved.
I’ve a deplorable tendency to become entrenched in my own prejudices: If I dislike an artist, an art form, or an idea (jazz, ballet, certain kinds of fiction) it is extremely difficult to get me to change my mind, and all evidence presented to the contrary will be discarded and very likely mocked. Of course, nobody suffers but me.
More on identity & self
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Paula Wilcox, Chris Bryant, Indira Varma, Sharleen Spiteri, Kelly Hoppen, Russell Mael
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