Lorelai

“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.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, A Civil Campaign

“Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be. And I do not like feeling stupid.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, The Curse of Chalion

“We should have taken our chances back then, when we were young and beautiful and didn't even know it.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Diplomatic Immunity

“And the Bastard grant us... in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, Paladin of Souls