“This is why medicine can’t be my calling,” said Pen dimly. “The demand is endless, and I’ve learned I am not. Only the gods could deal with all the … - Lois McMaster Bujold

You don't pay back your parents. You can't. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It's a sort of entailment. Or if you don't have children of the body, it's left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one.

The family economy evades calculation in the gross planetary product. It's the only deal I know where, when you give more than you get, you aren't bankrupted - but rather, vastly enriched.

But have you ever overheard two women discussing men? Men are crude liars, comparing their drabs, but women—I'd rather have a Mother's anatomist dissect me alive than to listen to the things the ladies say about us when they think they are alone.

Reading is an active and elusive experience. Every reader, reading exactly the same text, will have a slightly different reading experience depending on what s/he projects into the words s/he sees, what strings of meaning and association those words call up in his/her (always) private mind. One can never therefore, talk about the quality of a book separately from the quality of the mind that is creating it by reading it, in the only place books live, in the secret mind.