How close have you come to death?

Originally asked

The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A

A recurring Guardian Q&A prompt asked directly across respondents and years.

You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.

Recorded Eleanor Tomlinson said elsewhere, not written here
A horse-riding accident when I was about 15.

The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 May 2024 source ↗

Others on this question

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Yann Tiersen Pianist, composer
Yes! With my fiancée about two years ago, we were biking in the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park in California and we were stalked by a mountain lion for hours… It really changed my perception! But you know, they’re peaceful cats, there wasn’t any anger or aggression — that’s just the way it is in nature. It’s good sometimes to realize you can die! The experience made me realize that you have to know where you are, and know that the place you’re in is alive.
Recorded The Talks, 6 May 2016 source ↗
Joss Stone English singer, songwriter, and actress
Maybe the night we drove a Hummer in Kabul and went to a cafe that Osama bin Laden supposedly used to frequent.
Recorded The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 24 April 2021 source ↗
Jenny Diski Novelist and essayist
The print size in my mind decreased with time’s incremental decline, and as I arrived at the last word – weeks – it suddenly struck me, with all the force of the fullest sense of the word ‘struck’, that this could actually be his answer and not just the logical next time period in my sentence. Every cell in my body, except those responsible for maintaining a reasonable, calm exterior, was now lindy-hopping at that possibility, the only one that hadn’t occurred to me until that moment.
Recorded London Review of Books, 11 September 2014 source ↗

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