Bridge-players tell me that there must be some money on the game 'or else people won't take it seriously'. Apparently it's like that. Your bid - for God or no God, for a good God or the Cosmic Sadist, for eternal life or nonentity - will not be serious if nothing much is staked on it. And you will never discover how serious it was until the stakes are raised horribly high, until you find that you are playing not for counters or for sixpences but for every penny you have in the world.

Any game where the goal is to build territory has to be beautiful. There may be phases of combat, but they are only means to an end, to allow your territory to survive. One of the most extraordinary aspects of the game of go is that it has been proven that in order to win, you must live, but you must also allow the other player to live. Players who are too greedy will lose: it is a subtle game of equilibrium, where you have to get ahead without crushing the other player. In the end, life and death are only the consequences of how well or how poorly you have made your construction. This is what one of Taniguchi's characters says: you live, you die, these are consequences. It's a proverb for playing go, and for life.

"God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who

I've apparently been the victim of growing up, which apparently happens to all of us at one point or another. It's been going on for quite some time now, without me knowing it. I've found that growing up can mean a lot of things. For me, it doesn't mean I should become somebody completely new and stop loving the things I used to love. It means I've just added more things to my list. Like for example, I'm still beyond obsessed with the winter season and I still start putting up strings of lights in September. I still love sparkles and grocery shopping and really old cats that are only nice to you half the time. I still love writing in my journal and wearing dresses all the time and staring at chandeliers. But some new things I've fallen in love with -- mismatched everything. Mismatched chairs, mismatched colors, mismatched personalities. I love spraying perfumes I used to wear when I was in high school. It brings me back to the days of trying to get a close parking spot at school, trying to get noticed by soccer players, and trying to figure out how to avoid doing or saying anything uncool, and wishing every minute of every day that one day maybe I'd get a chance to win a Grammy. Or something crazy and out of reach like that. ;) I love old buildings with the paint chipping off the walls and my dad's stories about college. I love the freedom of living alone, but I also love things that make me feel seven again. Back then naivety was the norm and skepticism was a foreign language, and I just think every once in a while you need fries and a chocolate milkshake and your mom. I love picking up a cookbook and closing my eyes and opening it to a random page, then attempting to make that recipe. I've loved my fans from the very first day, but they've said things and done things recently that make me feel like they're my friends -- more now than ever before. I'll never go a day without thinking about our memories together.

Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos. That is the way we all see ...each other in life. Vanity, fear, desire, competition-- all such distortions within our own egos-- condition our vision of those in relation to us. Add to those distortions to our own egos the corresponding distortions in the egos of others, and you see how cloudy the glass must become through which we look at each other. That's how it is in all living relationships except when there is that rare case of two people who love intensely enough to burn through all those layers of opacity and see each other's naked hearts.

The denominational world tries to pressure its members to focus on the birth of Christ but in doing so layers of guilt are imposed and competition gets complicated as one Christmas program tries to outdo the other.

Some scenes you juggle two balls some scenes you juggle three balls some scenes you can juggle five balls. The key is always to speak in your own voice. Speak the truth. That's Acting 101. Then you start putting layers on top of that.

Because Microsoft seems to sometimes not trust customer choice they salt XP with all these little gizmos and trap doors to get people to try Microsoft stuff. But the reality is that we're downloading more players than we ever have on a worldwide basis.

The first few weeks football players look at you like you are speaking a foreign language. My job is to get them to trust me trust the system. I ask them to run in a way that makes no sense to them.

If the players don't trust the coach it is a problem and vice versa.

So if the players trust the coach it's not a problem. If the players don't trust the coach it is a problem and vice versa.

Something goes wrong I yell at them -'Fix it'- whether it's their fault or not. You can only really yell at the players you trust.

Golf is growing and there are more good young players but you don't see them going abroad. It's so expensive to travel.

A lot of the players are not involved with any NHL team so to play and travel around with the Oldtimers' it's a kind of gift that the players really appreciate.

Some people are drawn naturally - there are natural guitarists and there are natural piano players and I think guitar implies travel a sort of footloose gypsy existence. You grab your bag and you go to the next town.

I like ice hockey but it's a frustrating game to watch. It's hard to keep your eyes on both the puck and the players and too much time passes between scoring in hockey. There are usually more fights than there are points.

I'm very thankful to players like John Stockton and Spud Webb. They've made it possible for someone like me to make it. I think teams are actually looking for one player under 6-feet now because they make things happen.

I don't know concretely if it's due to superstition but any time a new rule is implemented into the NBA or a new piece of equipment or a new technology there is always a transition and adjustment period by players and coaches and anyone involved with the game.

Because I select my players from a feeling that comes to me when I am with them a certain sympathy you might call it or a vibration that exists between us that convinces me they are right.

Well I do feel that I carry the responsibility of representing my country wherever I am and this responsibility came with the success that I had in last couple of years not just myself but the whole group of tennis players that comes from Serbia. And athletes in general are in this moment the biggest ambassadors that our country has.

Darts players are probably a lot fitter than most footballers in overall body strength.

I think that people who have played sports have an ability to relate to people because when you're playing you have to work on teams and with opposing players.

I long for the days when athletes were revered. I want to see the romance return to sports to see people enjoy the game purely for the game and the players.

My four older brothers were my favorite players. That's why I got into football and sports.