Swiss professional tennis player, 1998–2022
As many of you know, the past three years have presented me with challenges in the form of injuries and surgeries. I've worked hard to return to full competitive form.
Recorded · Reuters · 2022
One question · 6 of 14 answers to it
What made you decide to stop something you were known for, and how did you know it was time?
Founder of CD Baby; author of Anything You Want
I read that at a key fork in the road moment for me where I just sold CD Baby and had a ton of money.
Recorded · The Tim Ferriss Show · 2023
United States basketball player, Los Angeles Lakers, 1996–2016
You gave a six-year-old boy his Laker dream And I'll always love you for it. But I can't love you obsessively for much longer. This season is all I have left to give.
Recorded · The Players' Tribune · 2015
United States professional tennis player, 1995–2022
I have never liked the word retirement. It doesn't feel like a modern word to me.
Recorded · Vogue · 2022
Operatic soprano and recitalist
As a very young singer, I was invited to the opera house in Berlin by the then-director of the opera house, Egon Seefehlner, and I had one opera to my name that I knew.
Recorded · Academy of Achievement (achievement.org)
Anglican Archbishop of Cape Town; chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission; Nobel Peace Prize, 1984
I stopped being a teacher when the South African Government introduced a deliberately inferior education for blacks called Bantu education, and I felt I wasn’t ready to collaborate with…
Recorded · American Academy of Achievement · 2004
Answers marked Recorded were said elsewhere and are quoted with the publication and date they came from. Those people have not joined — nobody here answers on anyone else's behalf.
What is the part of your job that people would be surprised is most of your job?
Pharmaceutical chemist; Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine, 2015
Most pharmaceutical workshops were shut down during the great cultural revolution. Without manufacturing support, we had to extract herbs ourselves using household vats etc.
Recorded · Nobel Prize Outreach · 2015
Mathematician and computer scientist; Turing Award, 1968
I have now come down to a topic which is very distasteful; it is not sufficient to do a job, you have to sell it. 'Selling' to a scientist is an awkward thing to do.
Recorded · Bell Communications Research Colloquium Seminar (transcription hosted by the University of Virginia Department of Computer Science) · 1986
Songwriter, musician and novelist
The artistic process seems to be mythologized quite a lot into something far greater than it actually is. It is just hard labor.
Recorded · NPR · 2014
Which book changed the way you think, and what did it change?
39th President of the United States, 1977–1981; Governor of Georgia 1971–1975
When I was a young boy, [my schoolteacher Julia Coleman] introduced me to Leo Tolstoy's novel, "War and Peace." She interpreted that powerful narrative as a reminder that the simple human…
Recorded · The Nobel Foundation · 2002
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1979–1990; Leader of the Conservative Party 1975–1990; MP for Finchley 1959–1992
C. S. Lewis - his works were very, very important during my time there. We had discussion groups. I did become more attracted to it although I still attended the Methodist church.
Recorded · Margaret Thatcher Foundation, from Thatcher MSS (Churchill Archive Centre) · 1989
Poet
Very much so. I went to synagogue regularly. My first education was interpreting the Bible.
Recorded · The Paris Review, Issue 122, Spring 1992 · 1992
What is the thing you are best at that nobody watching can see?
Co-founder, president and chief executive of NVIDIA
Of all of the things that I value most about my abilities, intelligence is not top of that list.
Recorded · YouTube (recording of the Caltech commencement address) · 2024
Chairman and chief executive of JPMorgan Chase from 2005
Curiosity is a form of humility — acknowledging that you don't know everything. Responding to curiosity allows other people to speak freely.
Recorded · JPMorgan Chase & Co. · 2024
Kenyan marathon runner
When I have a lot of pain, I try to confuse my mind to forget about the pain and think about the distance. I don't want pain to be in my mind, because I'd really lose focus on running.
Recorded · Outside · 2018
People, by what they do
- Science and medicine 105
- Arts and letters 1205
- Politics and public life 132
- Business and finance 70
- Technology 46
- Sport 108
Recorded for public figures, from the source their answers were taken from. Browse by era too.
Questions, by subject
- Identity & self 14
- Values & belief 13
- Change of mind 1
- Failure & regret 9
- Craft & work 36
- Money & investment 4
- Taste & recommendation 6
- Relationships 5
- Time & hindsight 8
- Death & what remains 13
- Daily life 9
- Attention & the world 8
Every question the bank can deal, in the order it was written. See all 126.
Some of the people here · A–Z
Find someone →Alan Dale, Angela Griffin, Angélica Negrón, Ariana Reines, Barbara McClintock, Charles Collingwood, Christine Baranski, Claire L. Evans, Cyndi Lauper, Dan Stevens, Dermot O'Leary, Emily Watson, Gina Lollobrigida, Heather Benjamin, Jackie Chan, JJJJJerome Ellis, Joan Baez, Joan Jett, Kate Mosse, Lance Black, Liev Schreiber, Louis Theroux, Marina Abramović, Martin Freeman, Michelle Visage, Minnie Driver, Mohamed ElBaradei, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Pauline Black, Paul McKenna, Rashid Johnson, Robert Peston, Sarah Paulson, Spencer Bailey, Sundar Pichai, Su Pollard, Tom Fletcher, Tony Judt, Yury Gogotsi, Zach Baron
Answers that stay at one address
You are dealt a few questions at a time and answer the ones you want to. What you write gets a permanent address and keeps it. Rewrite it whenever you like and say why — the new version goes up beside the old one rather than over it, so changing your mind reads as thinking rather than as a reversal.
You write before you read. Other members' answers to a question stay shut until you have answered it or passed on it, because reading first changes what you would have said. Passing is free and it is permanent.
- People
- 1,671
- Answers
- 7,149
- Questions
- 126
- First said
- 1910–2026
Most of what is here so far was said somewhere else and recorded with its source — a named person, a publication and a date, on every line. Nothing has been deleted.