People seem to get used to anything, and it is a short step from adaptation to attachment.

...some people coddle their own afflictions the way others spoil small pedigreed dogs with cans of pate.

Maybe the greatest favour a spouse can tender is to overlook what you can't.

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.

The discovery that heartbreak is indeed heartbreaking consoles us about our humanity.

Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.

I seem to remember even from when I was very young that when you loved someone you also hated them for making you love them, since loving someone is so incredibly humiliating.