Question: Are you afraid of death? 

Ayaan Hirsi Ali:    I fear death, I think, like everyone else.  One of the things that the threats have done is they have made me aware of how short life is, and how trivial things can sometimes take the pleasure away from life – and so to shrug those small things off.  And the constant idea that life is short.  So paradoxically, I think leading a much, I think, more meaningful and better life after the threats than before the threats when small things would bother me – the weather, or feeling too cold, or not getting what I wanted.

Recorded: August 15, 2007.