But what's so great about being a perfectionist?... You do all this work, and then the stuff you've made just pisses you off.
Lionel ShriverNow that children don't till your fields or take you in when you're incontinent, there is no sensible reason to have them, and it's amazing that with the advent of effective contraception anyone chooses to reproduce at all.
Lionel Shriver...some people coddle their own afflictions the way others spoil small pedigreed dogs with cans of pate.
Lionel ShriverYet 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.
Lionel Shriver