With no blame there's no shame. A human society can't exist without shame. Shame is like handedness or walking upright. It's a central human attribute. In fact, it's the first human quality ever recorded.''Where?''Genesis, Chapter Three. The covering of nakedness. The acquisition of shame was the first consequence of consciousness, of the speciating moment. Take shame from me and you are calling me pre-human.

There are some days we can claim and there are other days that claim us.

The more material we lose, the less we have. The less we have, the more we win.

That sense of happiness just out beyond my reach - I'm not sure I'd grasped that exactly, but I'd got something close to it, contentment maybe, or at least a functioning routine with regular rewards.

She had the hard, half-apathetic expression of one who deems anything possible at the hands of time and chance, except perhaps fair play

Surrender to fate and you will never be fully contented.