“My own ambition, my deepest and truest ambition, is to find within myself someday, somehow, the ability to do likewise, to do NOTHING - and find it enough.”

“I have no ambition to play the part of a mother, and why should I interfere with her illusions? I find it hard enough to keep my own.”

“My ambition is to not embarrass myself--which, if you know me, is a pretty serious ambition.”

“This was my ambition: to become a good wife and mother. Plus one improbable extra: [...] to find, deep inside, my own wiser self, to locate my own special future.I thought these were modest ambitions. They didn't seem too yawning or huge. But perhaps wanting what's essential and simple is the most extravagant wish of all.”

“I wanted life that's comfortable enough for me, my ambitions and love.”

“My second wife left me because she said I was too ambitious. She didn't realize that it is only the dying who are free from ambition. And they probably have the ambition to live. Some men disguise their ambition--that's all. I was in a position to help this young man my wife loved. He soon showed his ambition then. There are different types of ambition - that is all, and my wife found she preferred mine. Because it was limitless. They do not feel the infinite is an unworthy rival, but for a man to prefer the desk of an assistant manager - that is an insult.”