Skip to content

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 →
Cory Taylor Novelist and screenwriter
So many times I’ve wondered what might have happened to me if I had lost my legs, or even just my right one, where my first melanoma appeared two or three years later. If I’d just been a second slower stepping away from the car, I might not be dying now. I’d be legless, of course, but still in good health. Of these fateful forks in the road are our lives made up. We are all just a millimetre away from death, all of the time, if only we knew it.
Recorded Edited extract from Dying: A Memoir, Text Publishing, The Guardian, 17 May 2016 source ↗
Warren Buffett Chairman and chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway, 1970–2025
In particular, my decision to sell McDonald's was a very big mistake. Overall, you would have been better off last year if I had regularly snuck off to the movies during market hours.
Recorded His letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders in the 1998 annual report, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., February 1999 source ↗
Heather Graham American actress
I spent too many years being hard on myself, like a drill sergeant in my head. I thought that if I was hard on myself, I’d get more results, but I now know that’s not true.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 March 2016 source ↗

More from Adrian Scarborough

View profile →

More on failure & regret

Also answered this

Sofie Gråbøl, Paapa Essiedu, Paterson Joseph, Rosanna Arquette, Michelle Dockery, Rupert Graves

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer