Skip to content

The question

What lesson has mattered most in your life?

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.

Others on this question

View all 138 →
Roger Ebert Film critic
I believe that if, at the end, according to our abilities, we have done something to make others a little happier, and something to make ourselves a little happier, that is about the best we can do. To make others less happy is a crime. To make ourselves unhappy is where all crime starts. We must try to contribute joy to the world. That is true no matter what our problems, our health, our circumstances. We must try. I didn’t always know this and am happy I lived long enough to find it out.
Recorded Salon, excerpted from Life Itself: A Memoir, 15 September 2011 source ↗
Kevin Rowland British singer
Shakespeare said, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” – I think that’s true.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 9 August 2025 source ↗

More from Helen George

View profile →

More on time & hindsight

Also answered this

Frank Cottrell-Boyce, Felicity Jones, Matthew Modine, Sofia Coppola, Paapa Essiedu, Rose Ayling-Ellis

Search the directory for somebody in particular.

Explore further

Report this answer