Yet if there's no reason to live without a child, how could there be with one? To answer one life with a successive life is simply to transfer the onus of purpose to the next generation; the displacements amounts to a cowardly and potentially infinite delay. Your children's answer, presumably, will be to procreate as well, and in doing so to distract themselves, to foist their own aimlessness onto their offspring.

Notoriety is cheap. It's just easier to get noticed by doing something bad.

History is made of empires, and the United States was by far and away the greatest, richest, and fairest empire that had every dominated the earth. Inevitably, it would fall. Empires always did. But we were lucky, you said. We got to participate in the most fascinating social experiment ever attempted.

However gnawing a deficiency, satiety is worse... We are meant to be hungry.

You can't be stylish and petty at the same time.

A lot of people get so hung up on what they can't have that they don't think for a second about whether they really want it.

...whenever a woman describes a man as sweet, the dalliance is doomed.