Nothing at all.
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Craft & work
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
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 would have articulated aloud the comments I too often suppressed out of deference to arrogant, condescending, sexist bores.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 August 2017 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 203 →
Courtney Pine
British jazz musician
I would have spent more time practising and got a proper lawyer to sort out my first album contract.
Helen George
English actress
Going through a divorce.
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 Siri Hustvedt
View profile →I was a floor model briefly at Bloomingdale’s in New York in 1979. I hated it. When no one was watching, I would lock myself in the toilet and read.
The Blazing World.
The man who asked me directions on the subway seven years ago: I am so sorry for sending you to Queens rather than to the Bronx.
I have a penchant for happiness. I have experienced euphoria before a migraine, which may not count, but I have also felt immense happiness leaning back in a chair in sunlight, puttering in my garden, reading, dancing, immediately after giving birth and when writing.
More on failure & regret
- What has been your biggest disappointment? 219 answers
- Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? 209 answers
- What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? 122 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 122 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 61 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 36 answers
Also answered this · A–Z
Adam Kay, Adrian Edmondson, Armistead Maupin, Bill Bryson, Cory Taylor, Ethan Hawke
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All failure & regret questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject