Romance was a game, like bridge, in which you said things instead of playing cards. Like bridge you had to pretend you were playing for money or playing for some stakes.
We never pay anyone Dane-geld,
No matter how trifling the cost;
For the end of that game is oppression and shame,
And the nation that plays it is lost!
As things are, and as fundamentally they must always be, poetry is not a career, but a mug's game. No honest poet can ever feel quite sure of the permanent value of what he has written: He may have wasted his time and messed up his life for nothing.
When I work a game as an analyst, all I do is look at the game like a coach. Why was something successful? What makes it work? I just try to use my expertise and whatever insight I have to the game.
My image of what a city should be - the super-rich and all the poor and desperate and the people who have some kind of a desire. It's a surviving game, people trying to survive on many different levels.
Substances like LSD, which give away a secret about the nature of the social game - the human game and what underlies it - are potentially dangerous, of course, like any good thing is. Electricity is dangerous, fire is dangerous, cars are dangerous, planes are dangerous, but not so dangerous as driving on the freeway. The only way to handle danger is to face it. If you start getting frightened of it, then you make it worse. Because you project onto it all kinds of bogeys and threats which don't exist in it at all.
If there are dominant teams, people enjoy discussing whether that's good or bad for the game, and if there aren't any dominant teams, then people enjoy discussing that.
This game is repeated again and again, and in it the role of the so-called 'German princes' is just as miserable as that of the Jews themselves. These lords were really God's punishment for their beloved peoples and find their parallels only in the various ministers of the present time.
I try to be really balanced. I walk a lot, I wear a Fitbit, and that has really been a game changer for me. I get my steps, I eat whatever I want, I go to France and put on my bread-and-butter suit. Then I'll be balanced, like I'm going to eat my salads for a few days. But I just try to be really balanced with my body. And that has been a good pact for me so far.