I’m beginning to believe in the immortality of the soul, not on any religious grounds at all, but simply because it seems quite clear as you get older that the soul and the body start drifting apart.
And I suddenly had a vision of going to a counter, which might be described as a Hertz–Rent–a–Body counter, and asking the girl,
‘Excuse me, do you have anything with a slightly more powerful engine? Ooh, and with a sliding roof, I’d really like that!’
and she says, ‘No, I’m afraid we’re all out. Either take what we’ve given you or that’s it.’
‘Oh, I’ll take it, I’ll take it.’
So you’re stuck with a body which you may not necessarily feel entirely in concert with. You live with this body throughout your whole life, accommodating it, and of course adapting to it, and then it begins to creak and you hear noises from the back axle, and towards the end you begin to think, ‘My God, I hope I’ll have the strength to bring this body back to the counter with dignity and not have to leave it out in the countryside with a red triangle behind it.’
It’s for that reason I say we’re prisoners in our own shells and the main thing is to furnish them properly.
-Peter Ustinov
