“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.”

“I have in my mind’s eye an image of what a perfect mother and wife should be; and in her whom I must call “Mother” I find no trace of that image.”

“Why do you work so hard to make yourself disliked? I should think you'd find it happens enough on its own without putting yourself to any extra trouble.”

“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 love my mother for all the times she said absolutely nothing.... Thinking back on it all, it must have been the most difficult part of mothering she ever had to do: knowing the outcome, yet feeling she had no right to keep me from charting my own path. I thank her for all her virtues, but mostly for never once having said, "I told you so.”

“Don't interfere!" The Doctor silenced her angrily. "I cannot will my own destruction.”