Sandy Powell
British costume designer
To be getting paid for doing something I love.
What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
If you could edit your past, what would you change?
Failure & regret
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
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.
In 1999, the British Library auctioned off some of its newspaper holdings. My wife and I formed a non-profit and saved more than 20 tons of these irreplaceable bound newspapers, including the last intact run of Joseph Pulitzer’s New York World.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 1 August 2020 source ↗
Others on this question
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Irvine Welsh
Scottish novelist
I haven’t achieved anything of note yet.
Eddie Izzard
British comedian and actress
The double marathon on the last day of my 27 marathons in 27 days.
Beverley Knight
Singer and stage actor
Having a career that’s 29 years in.
More from Nicholson Baker
View profile →When we had children at home. But recently I finished a book about old secrets that I’ve been working on for a long time, and when I was done, I felt a gigantic, joyful relief in having escaped from the corn maze of remembered facts in which I’d been wandering for so long.
I made too much money in my 30s, and it distorted my writing and made me less hungry. Then, in my 40s, I spent all the money on daily life – and now I don’t have it.
It’s like all your emotions are apples and they get crushed all at once into cider.
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