“ ‘My mother must have influenced God in my favor/ the accused states at the inquiry.…

Fyodor Dostoyevsky
The Brothers Karamazov

“ ‘What have you done to me! What have you done to me!’ If we chose to think about it there is probably not one loving mother who could not, on her dying day, and often long before, address this reproach to her son.”

Marcel Proust
Filial Sentiments of a Parracide