I spent half my money on gambling, alcohol and wild women. The other half I wasted.

I’ve never gambled in my life. To me, a gambler is someone who plays slot machines. I prefer to own slot machines. It’s a very good business being the house.

When you gamble with your time, you may be placing a bet you can’t cover.

Dangers have their appeal because in danger your day-to-day, ordinary consciousness cannot function. Danger goes deep. Your mind is not needed; you become a no-mind. You are! You are conscious, but there is no thinking. That moment becomes meditative. Really, in gambling, gamblers are seeking a meditative state of mind. In danger – in a fight, in a duel, in wars – man has always been seeking meditative states.

...in his gambling, he had one besetting weakness — faith in a system; and this made his damnation certain.

a decision without an alternative is a desperate gambler’s throw,

The dice were rolling; Lawrence had placed his bet and realized too late that it was the whole world he had wagered.

He’d calloused his mind plenty, but because his foundation was cracked, when shit got real he lost control of his mindset and became a slave to his self doubt.

"When the bet is placed," he said, "a moment is carved away from the past and the future. In that enchanted moment, anything is possible. A man's debts and regrets and limitations disappear. He is buyin' the chance to imagine - for one moment at a time - that th enext card I deal will make him rich."

el capital riesgo empieza a parecerse mucho a comprar billetes de lotería. Y una vez que piensas que estás jugando a la lotería, ya estás preparado psicológicamente para perder.

Nothing goes right. I joined Gamblers Anonymous. They gave me two-to-one I don’t make it.

I was, in life, to be a gambler, a risk taker, a swashbuckler, a knight. I accepted, then and there, my place in this world. I was a fighter of windmills. I was a chaser of whales.

Sometimes you have to lose your mind before you come to your senses.

I have explained many times that I am, by Profession, a Gambler — not some jock-sniffing nerd or a hired human squawk-box with the brain of a one-cell animal. No. That would be your average career sportswriter — and, more specifically, a full-time Baseball writer.