What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it?
Recorded Henry R. Kravis said elsewhere, not written here
Family is the center of my life. Without a doubt, the saddest day of my life was July 13, 1991, when I lost my eldest son, Harrison, in a car accident.

KKR, 2024 source ↗

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Oliver Sacks Neurologist and writer
And I spent four years at a boarding school in the country, probably a rather abusive boarding school, and seeing very little of my parents, and that was a very bad time for me. A bad and almost a mad time. ... I think that some sort of trust, and ability for closeness, may have been compromised. And I think I’ve perhaps, to some extent, sort of kept a distance since that time, although this is not a distance I feel with my patients or my students.
Recorded Academy of Achievement recorded interview, American Academy of Achievement, 17 June 2000 source ↗
Sonny Rollins Jazz tenor saxophonist and composer
I went through some really terrible times. I don’t know whether I should really even mention it, but you mentioned that I had to go to prison and all that stuff. I was in a state where they had me in a straitjacket at one time. Can you understand what it would feel like to be in a straitjacket? I know. I couldn’t either, but I was, and it was brought about by sort of a drug psychosis in prison. I mean I just went completely… But it was tough, it was tough. I mean at that time they put you in — there’s a place in New York they used to call the Tombs. You’ve probably heard of it. I mean it was like a living tomb, with all the people. So I was there, and the withdrawal — physical symptoms, which were unbelievable.
Recorded Academy of Achievement (achievement.org) source ↗
Nobu Matsuhisa Chef and restaurateur
I moved to Argentina, then back to Tokyo and then to Anchorage, in Alaska, where I ran a restaurant. After 50 days the restaurant burnt down – an electrical fire. I lost my dream. I lost my money. I lost my passion. I thought about suicide, but thinking of my family and my kids made me realise I had to wake up.
Recorded The Observer / The Guardian, 12 April 2025 source ↗
Clive James Critic, essayist, poet and broadcaster
One thing, it's too big a subject and I want to talk about it on paper if I talk about it at all. But I can say this much, because I thought the life that my father and mother would have had together was cut short and something of what they might have achieved I hope that I'm achieving in my work.
Recorded Philip Williams, 7.30, ABC, ABC News, 20 August 2015 source ↗

More from Henry R. Kravis

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Question If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? Identity & self
What I would do differently? When I went through school, I was in a hurry. I was an economics major as an undergraduate, and I was a finance major in graduate school. I was in a hurry to succeed when I got out in the business world. I’m sorry I didn’t take more courses in the humanities and in history and in the arts.
Recorded Academy of Achievement, 12 February 1991 source ↗

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