“When I played drunks I had to remain sober because I didn't know how to play them when I was drunk.”
In Mark Pollman Bottled Wisdom: Over 1,000 Spirited Quotations & Anecdotes http://books.google.com/books?id=fM3CO-2nW7sC&pg=PA146, Wildstone Media, 1 January 1998, p. 146,
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Richard Burton 28
Welsh actor 1925–1984Related quotes

“When I played ball, I didn't play for fun.”
Source: My Life In Baseball : The True Record (1961), Ch. 23 : "To Plant One Rose —", p. 280
Context: When I played ball, I didn't play for fun. To me it wasn't parchesi played under parchesi rules. Baseball is a red-blooded sport for red-blooded men. It's no pink tea, and mollycoddles had better stay out. It's a contest and everything that implies, a struggle for supremacy, a survival of the fittest. Every man in the game, from the minors on up, is not only fighting against the other side, but he's trying to hold onto his own job against those on his own bench who'd love to take it away. Why deny this? Why minimize it? Why not boldly admit it?
Many a writer has said that I was "unfair." Well, that's not my understanding of the word. When my toes were stepped on, I stepped right back.

“The worst thing about some men is that when they are not drunk they are sober.”

“Oons, sir! do you say that I am drunk? I say, sir, that I am as sober as a judge.”
Don Quixote in England (1731), Act III, scene xiv

Disputed

As quoted in The Big Beat: Conversations with Rock's Great Drummers (1984) by Max Weinberg and Robert Santelli