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.

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.

I used to be a heavy gambler. But now I just make mental bets. That's how I lost my mind.

"I'm not a drug salesman. I'm a writer."

"What makes you think a writer isn't a drug salesman?"

So, am I a madman or a joker? Or simply a scribbler?

A professional writer is an amateur who didn't quit.

I know of no American who starts from a higher level of aspiration than the journalist. . . . He plans to be both an artist and a moralist — a master of lovely words and merchant of sound ideas. He ends, commonly, as the most depressing jackass of his community — that is, if his career goes on to what is called a success.

This poor gambler isn’t even a noun. He is kind of an adverb.

Writers are asked, 'How could you know so much about [fill in the profession]?' The answer, if the writing satisfies, is that one makes it up. And the job, my job, as a dramatist, was not to write accurately, but to write persuasively. If and when I do my job well, subsequent cowboys, as it were, will talk like me.

he was by profession a humanist, and that his pursuits and studies were making books for the press,

As entrepreneurs, we make bets everyday. We are gamblers — gambling our hard-earned money on labor, inventory, rent, marketing, etc., all with the hopes of a higher pay out. Oftentimes, we lose. But, sometimes, we win and win BIG. However, there is a difference between gambling in business and gambling in a casino. In a casino, the odds are stacked against you. With skill, you can improve them, but never beat them. In contrast, in business, you can improve your skills to shift the odds in your favor. Simply stated, with enough skill, you can become the house.

And it’s not because I’m tortured
Or by some delirium swayed
That I conjure up misfortune:
It is just my trade.

Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It's never been anything but your religion.

Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits — a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.