JF
Leaving the hospital.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 22 June 2012 source ↗
The question
What period or moment in your life brought you the most joy?Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
Asked in 52 of the 131 consecutive instalments of The Guardian's The Q&A harvested on 2026-08-29.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Others on this question
View all 577 →The 60s at the University of California at Santa Barbara weren’t bad.
Nicholson Baker
Contemporary American novelist and writer
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.
Sally Phillips
British actress
At the birth of each of my children. Drugs were involved.
Adrian Dunbar
Irish actor
My first year of drama school: a sense of freedom, doing something I wanted to do and being with lovely people.
More from Jonathan Safran Foer
View profile →Growing older so quickly.
It's not a competition.
More on time & hindsight
- What lesson has mattered most in your life? 138 answers
- What counsel would you give your twenty-year-old self — and what should they ignore? 78 answers
- What worries you about getting older? 61 answers
- What counsel has proved most valuable to you? 28 answers
- If you could put a message on a giant billboard, what would it say and why? 25 answers
- What line from a parent, teacher, or mentor do you still repeat to yourself? 23 answers
Also answered this
Joss Whedon, Jeanette Winterson, Maggie O'Farrell, Judith Kerr, Anne Enright, Jay McInerney
Search the directory for somebody in particular.
Explore further
- All time & hindsight questions
- The The Q&A questionnaire — 25 questions from the same format
- Explore the archive — by field, age, era, and subject