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The young are in great danger. Much evil results from their light and trifling reading. Much time is lost which should be spent in useful employment. Some would even deprive themselves of sleep that they might finish some ridiculous love story.

Everyone should have kids. They are the greatest joy in the world. But they are also terrorists. You'll realize this as soon as they're born, and they start using sleep deprivation to break you.

Having children makes you see the world in a completely different way. When you're responsible for those little lives, you can't slough it off or forget about it until later.

In my late teens and early twenties, I thought having children was possibly the most irresponsible thing you could do because I thought that the world was a dreadful place; I thought the sooner we all got off the planet, the better.

My idea is to bring out the inner child that my generation has inside, which does not go to sleep because of so much angst over the day-to-day routine. With so much going on, you start tuning out emotions and surprises.

When children are very young, you read them books that are positive to help them go to sleep. But there comes a moment when they begin to understand the difficulties of the world. They know there are problems and the books they read should reflect that, not gloss over them.

If you have children, you worry about the world you're leaving them.

Particularly at the moment, it's an incredibly optimistic thing to bring children into the world.

Children are the world's future, and we need to take care of them like we would any precious resource.