: When you're a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you're older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy.

-Albee, Edward Franklin, III
JERRY1958  On pornographic playing cards. The Zoo Story.

Never play cards with a man called Doc. Never eat at a place called Mom's. And never, ever, nomatter whatelse you do in your whole life, never sleep with anyone whose troubles are worse than your own.

-Algren, Nelson
  In Newsweek, 2  Jul.  Algren claimed that these were his only principles, taught him by 'a nice old Negro lady'.

My curse upon your whunstane hearts, Ye Enbrugh Gentry! The tythe o' what ye waste at cartes Wad stow'd his pantry!

-Burns, Robert
  'To W. Simpson, Ochiltree', stanza 4, referring to the poet Robert Fergusson, who died a pauper in the Edinburgh bedlam in1774 at the age of 24, and whom Burns considered 'my elder brother in misfortune, by far my elder brother in the muse'.

Digo, paciencia y barajar. What I say is, patience, and shuffle the cards.

-Cervantes, Miguel de
  Don Quixote, pt.2, ch.23.

Still round and round the ghosts of Beauty glide, And haunt the places where their honour died. See how the world its veterans rewards! Ayouth of frolics, an old age of cards.

-Pope, Alexander
  Epistles to Several Persons,'To a Lady', l.241^4.

I must complainthe cards are ill shuffled till I have a good hand.

-Swift,Jonathan
Quoted in ColinJarmanThe Guinness Dictionary of Sports Quotations (1990).