On choosing one's parents carefully

My mother was a troubled and tormented person, but she was not a deep thinker. She just found living life on the sort of terms that were available to her tremendously difficult.

My father by contrast was an incredibly resourceful man who would keep smiling through the worst that the world could do to him. He was the best kind of trickster. He did however entertain deep and troubling thoughts about human existence as such. He protested, philosophically, against what he saw as the supreme injustice that we human beings are not consulted about the two most important decisions affecting our lives: whether we are born, and whether we die.

A special man.