Death & what remains

How close have you come to death?

56 answers answered between 2003 and 2026 one of 25 in The Q&A

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.

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On the record

Public figures who have answered a question like this elsewhere. Quoted from the source shown, not written for FLAPSS.

Warren Zevon Songwriter and musician
This is a lot harder for you than it is for me. If you had gone to bed as many nights as I did in the old days knowing that you had taken so much stuff that could kill you and not knowing if you would wake up, this is not as shocking as you think.

Recorded The New York Times Magazine, 26 January 2003 source ↗

Tom Lubbock Art critic
It is a very rare affliction. A GP would expect to meet it once in a career and this form of brain cancer is unpredictable and dangerous. Usually, this tumour might give you only a two-year span since its discovery. I have had two operations and one course of radiotherapy and now three chemotherapies (one currently starting). My death is, in a sense, imminent. I say to myself: I am dying. Something in my head is hurrying to kill me.

Recorded The Observer, from the journals he kept between 2008 and 2010; published on the Guardian website under the title 'When Words Failed Me', 7 November 2010 source ↗

Maybe in the 1990s, but I was so selfish at the time, I wouldn’t really have noticed what was going on.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 13 January 2024 source ↗

A piece of scenery fell on my head during Richard II at the Globe theatre in 2019. I was very badly hurt.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 25 October 2025 source ↗

I lived in New York during 9/11 and worked a couple of blocks away from the twin towers. I was looking when the first tower exploded and then when the second plane flew in and, before we had to evacuate, I did see people jump to their death.

Recorded The Q&A, The Guardian, 8 November 2025 source ↗

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