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Some memorizers arbitrarily associate each playing card with a familiar person or object, so that the king of clubs is represented by, say, Tony Danza. The grand masters associate each card with a person, an action, or an object so that every group of three cards can be converted into a sentence.

The bizarre world of cards is a world of pure power politics where rewards and punishments are meted out immediately.

I remember my mother had this deck of cards that her mother had given her and that she passed on to me. It was a gypsy tarot deck that I used to carry everywhere.

The simplest way to say it is that I think we're all dealt these cards in life, but the cards in and of themselves don't read one way or the other. It's up to you to home in and cultivate whatever you've got in your hand.

Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.

Look, nobody is ever exactly the same as anybody else. You're handed the cards you are for a particular reason, so you follow that path and see where it takes you.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.

As in the Divine Right of Kings, hierarchies invest those who preside at the top of their pyramidal structure with absolute power to rule over the lesser ranks that spread down like a marble staircase to the broad foundation stones of those with no power at all.

Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but sometimes, playing a poor hand well.

I don't get much sense of reward from having discovered how to get the Foo card to coexist with the Bar card.