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.

In 2012 I stared into the eyes of someone who had just stabbed a man in the neck on the street. I was trying to help the victim; for a very long three or four seconds, I thought he was going to come for me next.

On the Freedom Rides in the year 1961, when I was beaten at the Greyhound bus station in Montgomery, I thought I was going to die. On March 7, 1965, when I was hit in the head with a night stick by a state trooper at the foot of the Edmund Pettus Bridge, I thought I was going to die.

I had heart surgery when I was 17. The other time was when I fell off my piano. My head was an inch away from a metal step.

What makes life worth living are the saints I meet-they can be long-time friends or someone I meet on a street. They find a way to behave decently in an indecent society.

What makes life worth living are the saints I meet-they can be long-time friends or someone I meet on a street. They find a way to behave decently in an indecent society.

If I were a religious person, my first question would be "Where the hell is God?" But I never expected him to be on the job.

I would try to write my war story, whether it was interesting or not, and try to make something out of it. I describe that process a little in the beginning of Slaughterhouse Five; I saw it as starring John Wayne and Frank Sinatra. Finally, a girl called Mary O’Hare, the wife of a friend of mine who’d been there with me, said, “You were just children then. It’s not fair to pretend that you were men like Wayne and Sinatra, and it’s not fair to future generations, because you’re going to make war look good.” That was a very important clue to me.

In our lives, we do our best to serve our community well, behave decently, and treat people well.

I think it would be the moment where I was doing everything right, where I was beyond criticism. It was back in World War II. It was snowing, but everything was black. The trucks were rolling in. I was surrounded by my buddies. And my rifle was between my knees, my helmet on my head. I was ready for anything. And I was right where I belonged. That would be the moment. It would have to be the moment.