Anna Paquin
New Zealand actress
I don’t think there’s a single moment. Every day that you wake up and your family is healthy and OK is a daily gratitude and happiness for me.
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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.
I have a penchant for happiness. I have experienced euphoria before a migraine, which may not count, but I have also felt immense happiness leaning back in a chair in sunlight, puttering in my garden, reading, dancing, immediately after giving birth and when writing.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 19 August 2017 source ↗
Others on this question
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Malorie Blackman
British writer
When my daughter was born.
David Baddiel
Comedian and writer
I’ve never been entirely happy, although for about 45 seconds after David Platt scored the winning goal against Belgium in the World Cup in 1990, I kind of blacked out with joy.
Bobby Gillespie
Singer and songwriter
Standing on stage in between Robert Young and Andrew Innes, blasting away.
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View profile →The man who asked me directions on the subway seven years ago: I am so sorry for sending you to Queens rather than to the Bronx.
I was a floor model briefly at Bloomingdale’s in New York in 1979. I hated it. When no one was watching, I would lock myself in the toilet and read.
I would have articulated aloud the comments I too often suppressed out of deference to arrogant, condescending, sexist bores.
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