“Drugs is a government game, Bilal. A way to rob us of our best black men, our army. Everyone who plays the game loses. Then they get you right back where we started, in slavery! Then they get to say "This time you did it to yourself." I won't play that game.”

“Life is a game, boy. Life is a game that one plays according to the rule."Yes, sir. I know it is. I know it."Game, my ass. Some game. If you get on the side where all the hot-shots are, then it's a game, all right-I'll admit that. But if you get on the other side, where there aren't any hot-shots, then what's a game about it? Nothing. No game.”

“It is part of a follow-my-leader game of second-best we have all been playing . . . it isn't a very good game; the people you play it with are apt to get hurt.”

“Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.”

“Gambling is not a vice, it is an expression of our humanness. We gamble. Some do it at the gaming table, some do not. You play, you win, you play, you lose. You play. ”

“What is any of this to us? Time is endless and ours. Love and Death are only the games we play in it.”