Arthur Chapman (poet) quote: “We welcome folks in Cactus Center if they've got an honest lay; If their game ain't too durn crooked, we never stop th…”

“Society is like this card game here, cousin. We got dealt our hand before we were even born, and as we grow we have to play as best as we can.”

Louise Erdrich book Love Medicine

Source: Love Medicine

“She'll never really let me go. She likes the game too much."
"Then stop playing it.”

Gillian Flynn book Gone Girl

Source: Gone Girl

“Monk enters the studio and starts playing, the rest of the musicians join him. After few minutes of play the technician from his room shouts and stops the band. ]
Monk: "Why did we stop?"
Technician: "I thought you were rehearsing."
Monk: "Aren't we always?"”

Thelonious Monk (1917–1982) American jazz pianist and composer

Thelonious Monk Documentary DVD.

“Jackie, what is the matter with you? You did not lose this ball game. We all lost it. No one man loses any ball game. You remember that. You are a good ball player. We need you to play shortstop. Come now, get dressed, let's go out and have a steak.”

Roberto Clemente (1934–1972) Puerto Rican baseball player

English translation of pep talk given on August 21, 1971, after Hernandez' 6th-inning miscue—scored as a hit—had contributed significantly to Cincinnati's 6-3 come-from-behind victory over Pittsburgh http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1971/B08210CIN1971.htm, as quoted in "Playing Games: Bad Day in Cincy" https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=iG8mAAAAIBAJ&sjid=Bm0DAAAAIBAJ&pg=5765%2C1664013&dq=clemente-began-talk-spanish by Charley Feeney, in The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Tuesday, September 28, 1971), p. 23
Baseball-related, <big><big>1970s</big></big>, <big>1971</big>

“What do we mean by “understanding” something? We can imagine that this complicated array of moving things which constitutes “the world” is something like a great chess game being played by the gods, and we are observers of the game. We do not know what the rules of the game are; all we are allowed to do is to watch the playing. Of course, if we watch long enough, we may eventually catch on to a few of the rules. The rules of the game are what we mean by fundamental physics.”

Richard Feynman (1918–1988) American theoretical physicist

Even if we knew every rule, however, we might not be able to understand why a particular move is made in the game, merely because it is too complicated and our minds are limited. If you play chess you must know that it is easy to learn all the rules, and yet it is often very hard to select the best move or to understand why a player moves as he does. So it is in nature, only much more so.
volume I; lecture 2, "Basic Physics"; section 2-1, "Introduction"; p. 2-1
The Feynman Lectures on Physics (1964)