Marie Kondo
Japanese organizing consultant, author, and television show host
In elementary school: I opened my lunchbox and it was empty. I was devastated.
What has been your biggest disappointment?
Question
What is the worst job you have done?
Craft & work
Question
What does love feel like?
Relationships
Question
What song would you like played at your funeral?
Death & what remains
Question
What did you want to be when you were growing up?
Identity & self
Question
When were you happiest?
Time & hindsight
Question
Who most deserves an apology from you, and why?
Failure & regret
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
This exact question recurs in The Guardian's institutional Q&A pool.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Romantic love – what a con. (I do still believe in it.)
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 10 October 2020 source ↗
Others on this question
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Simon Mayo
English radio presenter and author
Feeling as though I had to leave Radio 2 to get my life back on track. I had every intention of being David Jacobs or Brian Matthew and going on until I was 127, but it didn’t turn out like that.
Jo Nesbø
Norwegian writer and musician
Tottenham this season.
Danny DeVito
American actor, comedian and filmmaker
That the US, Britain and all these other bozos are still fighting wars all over the world.
More from Viv Albertine
View profile →In my first job in film, a giant bloke dressed like a sumo wrestler asked me to get his G-string out of his arse. He said he couldn’t reach it.
It’s like digging a field together: it’s hard work, not very glamorous, but you can stand back and think, “We did that.”
I am going straight to cremation like David Bowie, so there would be no funeral.
I had no female role models growing up. I lived an incredibly sheltered life: there was no TV at home and we had no visitors. It wasn’t until rock and pop came into my life that I concocted myself as a role model.
The moment my daughter was born in 1999, because it took me seven years to conceive.
I wish I’d told my mother that, in all the years I knew her, she was never once boring. We weren’t demonstrative, so that would have meant that I loved her.
More on failure & regret
- Who most deserves an apology from you, and why? 209 answers
- If you could edit your past, what would you change? 203 answers
- What is the worst thing anyone has said to you? 122 answers
- Which moment embarrassed you most? 122 answers
- How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success? Do you have a favourite failure? 69 answers
- What is the hardest thing that has happened to you, and what did you carry out of it? 36 answers
Also answered this
Shirley MacLaine, Kate Mosse, Paul Theroux, Judith Kerr, Lolita Chakrabarti, Rose Tremain
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