But lurco, I apprehend, signifies only a glutton, which falls very short of our idea of a lorel; and besides I do not believe that the word was ever sufficiently common in Latin to give rise to a derivative in English.

I don't want an elephant's soul, or any soul at all! he said. For a few moments he sat despondently. Suddenly he jumped to his feet, with his eyes blazing and all the signs of intense cerebral excitement. To hell with you and your souls! he shouted. Why do you plague me about souls? Haven't I got enough to worry, and pain, to distract me already, without thinking of souls?

One day, more than 60 years ago, we went as a family to the National Wallace Monument. My father took a binary, black-and-white approach to people and things: in toothpaste, Colgate was bad and Euthymol good; in bicycles, Raleigh was preferred to BSA; in Polar explorers, Captain Scott didn’t stand a dog’s chance against Amundsen.

When I buy a new book, I read the last page first. That way, in case I die before I finish, I know how it ends. That, my friend, is a dark side.