"Understand him?" Amy asked, turning to face her. "The Doctor. You think you could understand the Doctor? That River or I do? No wonder you're driving yourself half mad. We're not supposed to understand him, we're not meant to understand him. We can be his friends, sure, we can love him. But understand him?" She shook her head. "We need to help him, we can protect him in small busts. But that's it Rose. All of us. Even River. We are such a small, small parts of his life. But that's fine, Rose. That's what he needs. We're tiny parts of his life, but he's such a huge part of ours, all we can do to pay him back for that is to shine as brightly in his memory as we can."

She found a rack that wouldn't move and leaned against it. "Rory and I have been traveling with him for a decade, River... who knows. We've learned a long time ago to stop trying to understand him, we learned to accept him, to love him as he is. He pities you? Show him you're better than that. By being better than that, but know that he'll always pity us our life spans if nothing else. But we can spend that time upset about it, or we can make sure that man never, ever, forgets us."