Children

When Raymond Carver was asked near the end of his life to name the most profound influence on his writing, he said "having children."

Marcel Duchamp never had any, thinking that child-rearing bound one too closely to the value system of one's time and certain prescribed ways of thinking. 

The great thing about having a child is that it wants more of you than you have to give, like art.

Last night I had a dream about my friend, ____________. We were eating dinner together in a restaurant. He was clearly depressed and I had to do all the talking. I asked him about his work, his love life, music, the new Porsche he'd just bought, until I ran out of those kinds of almost meaningless things to say.

Desperate, I bored down, looking for the inner man. "You know," I said, "it's time for you to grow up."  

He looked at me and excused himself from the table, leaving behind the entree the waiter had just served.

Two or three years went by. I ate my dinner alone, then sat there for a long time drinking coffee and brandy.

Finally, my friend returned. He asked if he could sit down. "Of course," I said. He said he'd been thinking alot about what I'd said, that he knew it wasn't easy to be as honest as I'd been. He couldn't make any promises but he'd try to become a real man, be a good father to his daughter, treat women in a completely different way and renounce the plastic value system he once embraced. 

I said I was glad to hear this, that I knew his decision was the right one. Then I thanked him for coming back and making me a man.