The years of self-doubt.
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What is the most important lesson life has taught you?
Time & hindsight
Question
What would you like to be remembered for?
Death & what remains
Question
Which moment embarrassed you most?
Failure & regret
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Repeated verbatim in The Guardian's long-running Saturday Q&A; two publisher-hosted examples establish recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but if I could go back and fix the mistake, I wouldn’t be here.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 August 2024 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 205 →
Michael Kiwanuka
English singer-songwriter
Nothing. Everything happens for a reason.
Ephraim Asili
Filmmaker, Educator, and DJ
I’d have lesser expectations — those expectations not being as great might actually be more effective
Warren Buffett
Chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, 1970–2025
In particular, my decision to sell McDonald's was a very big mistake. Overall, you would have been better off last year if I had regularly snuck off to the movies during market hours.
Recorded
His letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders in the 1998 annual report, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., February 1999
source ↗
More from Harlan Coben
View profile →I worked a janitorial job, cleaning university dormitories after students had gone home for the summer. You can’t imagine the condition some of those rooms were in. They could have doubled as sets for a slasher film.
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.
With a wistful smile.
I was followed by a mob of fans when I was doing a photoshoot in Paris. When I signed autographs for them during a break, one remarked: “Who the fuck is Harlan Coben? I told you it wasn’t Bruce Willis.”
A white-hot explosion that turns into a comforting warmth.
I don’t even voice them. Perhaps the books are my outlet here.
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- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 39 answers
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