Paul Auster Quotes

In my twenties, I was a huge, insane risk-taker.

Writing's like gambling. Unpredictable and sporadic successes make you more addicted, not less.

Why do people play the lottery, or why do people gamble, period? You know, it's with the hope of winning something more.

I'm a gambler at heart. That's my life.

I love the fast lane.

Without gambling, I would not exist.

I have long understood that losing always comes with the territory when you wander into the gambling business, just as getting crippled for life is an acceptable risk in the linebacker business. They both are extremely violent sports, and pain is part of the bargain. Buy the ticket, take the ride.

I live to feel myself in danger.

It's very real, the narrow line between a night danced away and the potential of death around the corner.

Las Vegas is a good place for people who like to make mistakes.

I was living a dangerous life before I started boxing.

Sometimes when you gamble, you get up from the table with a fortune.

No use gambling if you can't lose your head once in a while.

Whoever plays deep must necessarily lose his money or his character.

When I was young and didn't have money, I liked gambling because winning and losing was fun for the rush of it. The amount of money that I would have to put down now to get that rush, there is no f'ing way I'm going to do it. It's just stupid. I would rather get that rush some other way.

There's a game out there, and the stakes are high. And the guy who runs it figures the averages all day long and all night long. Once in a while he lets you steal a pot. But if you stay in the game long enough, you've got to lose. And once you've lost there's no way back, no way at all.

He is like some sherry-crazed old dowager who has lost the family silver at roulette, and who now decides to double up by betting the house as well.

The craving to risk death is our last great perversion. We come from night, we go into night. Why live in night?

Nations, like individuals, cannot become desperate gamblers with impunity. Punishment is sure to overtake them sooner or later.

I have a bad gambling problem. You're not in show business for 12 years and dress like this without a bad gambling problem.

All is going well, very well, I couldn’t ask for anything better— So why do I hate my life?

To have a true idea of man or of life, one must have stood himself on the brink of suicide, or on the door-sill of insanity, at least once.

God save me from myself.

Traveling is like gambling: it is always connected with winning and losing and generally where it is least expected we receive, more or less than what we hoped for.

This was my first lesson about gambling: if you see somebody winning all the time, he isn't gambling, he's cheating. Later on in life, if I were continuously losing in any gambling situation, I would watch very closely.