If you commit to it, you won’t ever stop learning.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 February 2026 source ↗
The question
What lesson has mattered most in your life?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Verbatim recurring item in The Guardian Q&A; two fully readable publisher-hosted respondent pages establish institutional recurrence.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
If you commit to it, you won’t ever stop learning.
The Q&A, The Guardian, 7 February 2026 source ↗
Never save anything for best.
That fear and excitement sometimes feel quite similar and you can misinterpret one for the other.
Don’t overcook pasta.
Not really. I thought that getting the Nobel Prize was a big interruption in my career, I thought and it was very distracting. It takes a lot of time you know, it just takes time to be honoured, you have to travel and you have to give speeches of things you have, oh it’s so often that you get bored to tears when you hear your own voice. And it’s really taking a lot of your time and there’s no way that during this time you can start something new, I mean you just profit from what you’ve done and there is no time to develop new ideas.
I was going to a bar with friends and there was a line at the door. I’d been there before and asked the doorman to skip the line. He said, “Oh, I remember you, you were in Almost Famous, weren’t you?” And I said, “Yeah.” And he goes, “Yeah, get back in line.”
A net positive from my time on Earth.
Things I wish I’d done better that day.
Giving a speech in high school at a pep rally that wasn’t going so well and the dean unplugged the mic. Apparently, I was rambling and the spirit of the cafeteria was being weighed down.
A strong sense of being loved and a hopefulness for their life ahead.
Hopefully we have life in the minds and hearts of the people we interacted with.
Daphne Guinness, Desmond Tutu, Su Pollard, Shakin' Stevens, Bruno Tonioli, Hugh Skinner
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