HC
I’ve made a lot of mistakes, but if I could go back and fix the mistake, I wouldn’t be here.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 3 August 2024 source ↗
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.
Others on this question
View all 203 →I’d give my younger self the lessons I’ve learned over the years, sparing myself the need to figure everything out so publicly.
Suzanne Vega
American singer-songwriter
I would have tried to meet Lou Reed backstage. I went to see him for years, and never tried to meet him. Eventually we met at award shows and did become friends.
I’d have reported the tutor who asked me to read an essay to him sitting on the toilet as he lay soaping himself in the bath.
David Jason
English actor
Not getting older at each birthday, but I appreciate it beats the alternative.
More from Harlan Coben
View profile →I worked a janitorial job, cleaning university dormitories after students had gone home for the summer. You can’t imagine the condition some of those rooms were in. They could have doubled as sets for a slasher film.
With a wistful smile.
A white-hot explosion that turns into a comforting warmth.
I was followed by a mob of fans when I was doing a photoshoot in Paris. When I signed autographs for them during a break, one remarked: “Who the fuck is Harlan Coben? I told you it wasn’t Bruce Willis.”
We are too often advised to live life to the fullest. That’s too much pressure. The key is to find joy and poignancy in the quiet and mundane. Life is lived between the so-called big moments.
I don’t even voice them. Perhaps the books are my outlet here.
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