Being alive on Earth is challenging and I like to believe that whatever happens after is filled with peace and ease.
What happens when we die?
Question
What is the trait you most deplore in others?
Values & belief
Question
What is your idea of perfect happiness?
Identity & self
Question
What is your greatest fear?
Identity & self
Question
Which trait do you most dislike in yourself?
Identity & self
Originally asked
The Guardian, to a different person each week, The Q&A
A recurring late-stage question in The Guardian Q&A, with materially different answers on publisher-hosted pages.
You answer as yourself. Nobody on FLAPSS answers as anybody else.
Oh, man. Well, I hope when we die, it’s the same as before we were born. No one’s really frightened of that enormous, infinite blackness before we were born. No one sits there thinking, “Oh, God, how awful. I was nothing.” So I don’t really see why we should be frightened of that after we die, as long as it is black. I really don’t want to be up there on a cloud playing a harp, meeting some of the people I’ve hated in my life. I can’t imagine a greater nightmare. That would be hell, in fact.
The Talks, 7 May 2025 source ↗
Others on this question
View all 51 →
Jenny Diski
Novelist and essayist
I’d never been envious of those who believe in an afterlife until now. It would be so much cosier than dissolution. She’s gone to the next room. Nope, can’t manage it. She’s gone to dust and rubble. Gone nowhere. No where to go to. No she to go to it. Much easier to be convinced you will be met in Elysian fields by a thousand virgins, or drink from fountains of Manhattans. I can’t even get close to what they call faith, though I quite see Pascal had a point.
I have lots of beliefs about that, but that will have to wait for another interview.
Albert Hammond Jr.
Musician
No. I mean, it depends on how you look at it. In the sense that we all have a piece of cosmic dust in us from the beginning – The Big Bang – then yes. But no, I don’t believe in heaven or hell.
More from Hugh Grant
View profile →Telling me the menu is only accessible through the QR code.
Drinking a pint of London Pride while munching Twiglets and reading about Colin Firth having a critical and box office catastrophe.
The cat bowls. With the old cat food dried on like cement.
I am unable to use scissors.
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