Last year, driving in California, I found myself on the wrong side of the road. I was 30 seconds away from hitting two cars coming the other way.
The Guardian, The Q&A, The Guardian, 6 May 2017 source ↗
The question
How close have you come to dying?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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Others on this question
View all 209 →
Paul O'Grady
British comedian, actor and television presenter
I had a bad heart attack 20 years ago: I think I slid off the mortal coil for about 30 seconds.
Christopher Hitchens
Essayist, critic and journalist
I have more than once in my time woken up feeling like death. But nothing prepared me for the early morning last June when I came to consciousness feeling as if I were actually shackled to my own corpse. The whole cave of my chest and thorax seemed to have been hollowed out and then refilled with slow-drying cement. I could faintly hear myself breathe but could not manage to inflate my lungs. My heart was beating either much too much or much too little. Any movement, however slight, required forethought and planning.
Kathy Lette
Australian-British author
Hitchhiking across Australia as a teenager, relying on the kindness of passing serial killers.
Brendan Gleeson
Irish actor and director
Getting knocked down by a bus. The experience left me with the exhilaration of life enhanced.
More from Aidan Gillen
View profile →I won a local art competition aged 10 – the first time I’d won anything.
Cleaning around the feet of John Malkovich with industrial carpet cleaner while he was trying to learn lines in the foyer of a theatre.
A stuntman. Evel Knievel was an icon.
Teachers at my school, for being such a smartarse.
Foxes making love: it’s a very unsettling sound.
The floral waistcoat and shocking-pink shirt combo I wore on my 21st.
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