kd lang: 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.

kd lang

Canadian musician

Recorded said elsewhere, not written here

When I was working hard, I was going so fast that I didn’t absorb a lot.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 May 2021 source ↗

Others on this question

View all 203 →

Chris Bryant

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.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 September 2025 source ↗

Siri Hustvedt American novelist, essayist, poet

I would have articulated aloud the comments I too often suppressed out of deference to arrogant, condescending, sexist bores.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 August 2017 source ↗

Gloria Steinem Writer and feminist organiser

Since hostile people still call me a former Playboy Bunny, even at 82, I probably shouldn’t have done that in my youth, even to write an exposé. And since a couple of times they’ve also referred to me as a former CIA agent, because I went to two Soviet-era communist youth festivals, I probably shouldn’t have done that, either. Yet if I hadn’t done both, I might have judged other people by such empty symbols, too.

Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 4 March 2017 source ↗

James Norton English actor