Lionel Shriver: If you could revise one chapter of your past, what would you change?

The question

If you could revise one chapter of your past, what would you change?

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.

Lionel Shriver

American author

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

I would have taken more drugs.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 May 2016 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 203 →

Jodi Picoult American author

I would not let Nick Cassavetes direct My Sister’s Keeper, the film. He said [the ending] was going to match what was in the book, then changed it.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 10 September 2022 source ↗

Paapa Essiedu British actor

I would really love to know my parents as an adult. I lost my dad when I was 14 and my mum when I was 20.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 18 November 2023 source ↗

Corinne Bailey Rae

I wouldn’t change anything. When I was 29, my first husband died, so I learned a new way of thinking about life, which is: there are many things that you can’t control.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 23 September 2023 source ↗

Eve Ensler American playwright, performer, feminist, and activist

I would have honoured my body, I would have lived inside it, cherished it and protected it.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 June 2019 source ↗