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.

Steve Jobs

Co-founder and chief executive of Apple; co-founder of NeXT; chief executive of Pixar

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here
But the market was changing. The industry was changing. The scale was changing. And in the end we knew we would be either the last company to make it or the first to not make it. We were right on the edge. We thought we would be the last one that made it, but we were wrong. We were the first one that didn't. We put an end to the companies that tried to do that. We certainly made our fair share of mistakes, but in the end I think we should have taken a bit longer to realize the world was changing and just gone on to be a software company right off the bat.

Daniel Morrow, Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories, for the Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program, 20 April 1995 source ↗

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Kim Wilde English pop singer
There are several boyfriends I wish our paths had not crossed.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 August 2019 source ↗

More from Steve Jobs

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Question What bad recommendations do people in your field repeat too often? Craft & work
No. We have a lot of customers, and we have a lot of research into our installed base. We also watch industry trends pretty carefully. But in the end, for something this complicated, it's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them.
Recorded Andy Reinhardt, Business Week Q&A in the Apple boardroom, extended online-only version, 25 May 1998 source ↗
Question Does the thought of dying frighten you? Death & what remains
I've always felt that death is the greatest invention of life. I'm sure that life evolved without death at first and found that without death, life didn't work very well because it didn't make room for the young. It didn't know how the world was fifty years ago. It didn't know how the world was twenty years ago. It saw it as it is today, without any preconceptions, and dreamed how it could be based on that. We're not satisfied based on the accomplishment of the last thirty years. We're dissatisfied because the current state didn't live up to their ideals. Without death there would be very little progress.
Recorded Daniel Morrow, Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories, for the Computerworld Smithsonian Awards Program, 20 April 1995 source ↗
Question Who makes your work possible behind the scenes? Craft & work
You're missing it. This is not a one-man show. What's reinvigorating this company is two things: One, there's a lot of really talented people in this company who listened to the world tell them they were losers for a couple of years, and some of them were on the verge of starting to believe it themselves. But they're not losers. What they didn't have was a good set of coaches, a good plan.
Recorded Andy Reinhardt, Business Week Q&A in the Apple boardroom, extended online-only version, 25 May 1998 source ↗

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