House Of Cards Quotes & Sayings

It's not enough to say you want to lose fifty, seventy, or a hundred and twenty pounds. Because once you hit those magic numbers, what happens then?
Where is the motivation to continue with this new lifestyle you've created for yourself? I think you'll find that you need to stand for something, or you risk collapsing like a house of cards. You need to give yourself a reason to fight fat and to keep on fighting. — Jane Olson

God's dream is that you have an abundance, that you be totally out of debt, pay your house off, pay your credit cards off, and have so much overflow that you can be a blessing to everyone around you! — Joel Osteen

I believe that I have really found the relationship between gravitation and electricity, assuming that the Miller experiments are based on a fundamental error. Otherwise, the whole relativity theory collapses like a house of cards. — Albert Einstein

Once thing goes wrong, then the whole house of cards collapses. And there's no way you can extricate yourself. Until someone comes along to drag you out. — Haruki Murakami

If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which 'took these things into account' was not faith but imagination. — C.S. Lewis

Sometimes I feel that in religious content, religious drama, it's almost told like a tale, like an account of facts, and in 'A.D. The Bible Continues,' it's drama, it's real drama that we like to see on TV today, seeing the characters struggle and doubt and be completely in conflict with each other, kind of like 'House of Cards.' — Juan Pablo Di Pace

Honey, have you seen my measuring tape?"
"I think it's in that drawer in the kitchen with the scissors, matches, bobby pins, Scotch tape, nail clippers, barbecue tongs, garlic press, extra buttons, old birthday cards, soy sauce packets thick rubber bands, stack of Christmas napkins, stained take-out menus, old cell-phone chargers, instruction booklet for the VCR, some assorted nickels, an incomplete deck of cards, extra chain links for a watch, a half-finished pack of cough drops, a Scrabble piece I found while vacuuming, dead batteries we aren't fully sure are dead yet, a couple screws in a tiny plastic bag left over from the bookshelf, that lock with the forgotten combination, a square of carefully folded aluminum foil, and expired pack of gum, a key to our old house, a toaster warranty card, phone numbers for unknown people, used birthday candles, novelty bottle openers, a barbecue lighter, and that one tiny little spoon."
"Thanks, honey."
AWESOME! — Neil Pasricha

Ridcully sat in horrified amazement. He'd always enjoyed Hogswatch, every bit of it. He'd enjoyed seeing ancient relatives, he'd enjoyed the food, he'd been good at games like Chase My Neighbor up the Passage and Hooray Jolly Tinker. He was always the first to don a paper hat. He felt that paper hats lent a special festive air to the occasion. And he always very carefully read the messages on Hogswatch cards and found time for a few kind thoughts about the sender. Listening to his wizards was like watching someone kick apart a doll's house. — Terry Pratchett

During my time at Eton, I led regular nighttime adventures, and word spread. I even thought about charging to take people on trips.
I remember one where we tried to cross the whole town of Eton in the old sewers. I had found an old grill under a bridge that led into these four-foot-high old brick pipes, running under the streets.
It took a little nerve to probe into these in the pitch black with no idea where the hell they were leading you; and they stank.
I took a pack of playing cards and a flashlight, and I would jam cards into the brickwork every ten paces to mark my way. Eventually I found a manhole cover that lifted up, and it brought us out in the little lane right outside the headmaster's private house.
I loved that. "All crap flows from here," I remember us joking at that time. — Bear Grylls

Philosophers are all caught up in their philosophies. That's their house of cards. Religious leaders are caught up in their religious movements to the point where they forget about freedom. Everybody's got their drama going. — Frederick Lenz

Dealing with pain for surviving on this thirsty concrete — Kjiva

Sarah. Oh, Sarah." He closed his eyes and slapped his hand over his face. "Sarah, Sarah, Sarah. You don't try to use reason with a man when you want to play slap and tickle with him."
"You don't?" When he grinned and shook his head, I scowled. "Why not?"
Colton sighed. "Because dicks don't respond to reason; they respond to stimulation."
"So ... ?" What the heck was he saying?
"Seduce that motherfucker, and he'll fold like a house of cards. — Linda Kage

I will be thirty years old again in thirty seconds. I will take the best room in the Grand Central or the Orndorff Hotel. I will dine on oysters and palomitas and wash them down with white wine. Then I will go to the Acme or Keating's or the Big Gold Bar and sit down and draw my cards and fill an inside straight and win myself a thousand dollars. Then I will go to the Red Light or the Monte Carlo and dance the floor afire. Then I will go to a parlor house and have them top up a bathtub with French champagne and I will strip and dive into it with a bare-assed blonde and a redhead and an octoroon and the four of us will get completely presoginated and laugh and let long bubbly farts at hell and baptize each other in the name of the Trick, the Prick, and the Piper-Heidsick. — Glendon Swarthout

People are suppose to return response cards, but many of them haven't. These are people I naturally assumed would be thrilled and would reply immediately. Now I have to call them and ask them about it, and I have to be nice and not say what I would like to say.
"Hello? I'm sorry to bother you, but is it too much fucking trouble to send that little card back? I put a stamp on it. But maybe you need me to come over to your house and carry you to the mailbox."
In light of these developments, there ought to be a way to uninvite people who are disturbing me. — Suzanne Finnamore

Created by writer Beau Willimon, who's worked on several political campaigns, 'House of Cards' cannily exploits the current widespread cynicism for our politics, catering to a public scorn that's warranted and also glib in the sort of cheap pox-on-both-houses way that means not having to pay attention. — Steve Erickson

I close my eyes at his intimate touch. It's a slow movement, not one meant to seduce. It's one to show how much he loves me, and I flatten my lips, fighting the urge to cry. Noah nudges me toward him and if it wasn't for his hold, I'd drop like a house of cards.
I fall into him, and Noah wraps me in his arms. "It's okay, baby. We're okay."
I cling tighter to him, because it doesn't feel okay. For the past two months, life was good and easy and everything I dreamed it could be. Despite my efforts, the muscles at the corner of my mouth tremble. I wanted to be done with tears and with whispered comments thrown in my direction like knives and with this overwhelming sense that I'm less and that I'll never belong. — Katie McGarry

Oh, yes! Fill the churches with dirty thoughts! Introduce honesty to the White House! Write letters in dead languages to people you've never met! Paint filthy words on the foreheads of children! Burn your credit cards and wear high heels! Asylum doors stand open! Fill the suburbs with murder and rape! Divine madness! Let there be ecstasy, ecstasy in the streets! Laugh and the world laughs with you! — Grant Morrison

Our civilization will, of course, be "playing God" in an ultimate sense of the phrase: evolving a greater intelligence than currently exists on earth. It behooves us to be a considerate creator, wise to the world and its fragile nature, sensitive to the needs for stable footings that will prevent backsliding
and keep that house of cards we call civilization from collapsing. — William H. Calvin

But a man with an experience is never at the mercy of a man with only an argument ... If we can lead people into the manifest presence of God, all false theological houses of cards will tumble down. — Tommy Tenney

I don't make a habit of watching my parents' films, because it is a little strange. But I will say that I binge watch 'House of Cards' compulsively, and I think it's the first time I've ever seen one of my mom's projects and totally forgot she was my mom! — Dylan Penn

I watch so much television. My DVR is full. I love putting my kids to bed, so I can sit on the couch with my wife and we can dissect The Affair, The Americans, House of Cards, or whatever it is. I'm so lucky. — Scott Foley

The best of American television is thought-provoking, original, brilliant, exciting - from 'The Sopranos' on, whether it's 'The Wire' or 'Breaking Bad' or 'House of Cards,' they're fantastic pieces of art. — Martin Freeman

Her knee caught him between the legs with pitiless accuracy, driving the wind from his chest, making him teeter for a breathless moment, then bringing him down like a sledgehammer to a house of cards. As he slid groaning to the carpet in that special, shooting agony that only a blow to the fruits can produce, it was little consolation that he had been right.
His Queen was quite evidently a woman of rare and fiery passion. — Joe Abercrombie

Maybe love, too, is beautiful because it has a wildness that cannot be tamed. I don't know. All I know is that passion can take you up like a house of cards in a tornado, leaving destruction in its wake. Or it can let you alone because you've built a stone wall against it, set out the armed guards to keep it from touching you. The real trick is not to let it in, but to hold on. To understand that the heart is as wide and vast as the universe, but that we come to know it best from here, this place is gravity and stability, where out feet can still touch ground. — Deb Caletti

Every plan is a house of cards. — Holly Black

What's the most critical factor in any business decision you'll ever have to make? Basically, it boils down to this question: If this all crashes, will it bring the whole house tumbling down like a pack of cards? One business matra remains embedded in my brain - protect the downside. — Richard Branson

Life is a house of cards, balanced on a tetter-totter,
precariously perched on a roller coaster.
The only thing that should surprise us about our surprises is that we are surprised by them.
Beth Cardall's Diary — Richard Paul Evans

God sent the Egyptians ten plagues that became increasingly harder, one after the other, starting with blood, and ending with the death of the first born. Similarly, debt sometimes starts with charging just a couple of extra dollars to our credit cards when we want something we can't afford to pay cash for. Before long, it might turn into a second mortgage on our house. Debt can kill our future and take our house with it. — Celso Cukierkorn

I have more faith in doing something creative for a cable station or something like Yahoo or Google or Amazon. What Netflix did with 'House of Cards' and David Fincher was brilliant. That is inspiring to me. I think there is more chance for creativity in animation, it just hasn't happened there yet. — Henry Selick

But I didn't want this. Feeling like a house of cards and realizing he had the power to hold me together or scatter me. — Natalie Herzer

Why travel to the Moon or Mars if we only continue our wars there with Russia or China or Africa? Why build rockets at all? For fun? For adventure? Or is this the same process that sends the salmons back upstream year after year to spawn and die - a subliminal urge in mankind to spread, in self-preservation, to the stars? Are we then secretly fearful that one day the sun might freeze and the the earth grow cold or the sun explode in a terrific thermal cataclysm and burn down our house of cards? — Ray Bradbury

The casting of any film is around 60% of the film, but it's also about the right casting insight. It's a bit like a house of cards, everyone has to match up in a certain way so the whole structure is grounded. So that's essential, and yes, it's about finding the right people and the right constellation around the lead character. — Nicolas Winding Refn

You know that when a group of utility workers are withholding their customer service identification cards, they are likely engaging in some form of illegal activity at your home. — Steven Magee

You're a kid, your whole life is awesome. It's awesome, right? You had no money, no ID, no cell phone, no nothing, no keys to the house. You just ran outside into the woods. You weren't
scared of nothing. I challenge you to do that as an adult. All your IDs, all your credit cards - just run out of the house with no phone, turn the corner where you can't see your house, and
not have a full on panic attack. — Bill Burr

If only I had known a year ago what I'd be facing now. Until last year I lived with the innocent arrogance that my life was a simple product of effort, will, and design. But now I am a house of cards, held precariously by the fragile conspiracy of wind, weight, and angle. Perhaps it is best we cannot see into our futures. — Martha Manning

For the fundamentalist who wants to believe every word of the Bible, however, life is a house of cards, with each card a tenet of faith. If you remove one card, the entire house collapses. — Morris Sullivan

Israfel has long been a house of cards, and he has been disturbed. He can feel his supports collapsing, day by day. — Louise Blaydon

People tell me the Netflix series, House of Cards, is sort of like my class come to life. The movie Margin Call portrays the realities of hierarchical relationships and rivalries beautifully, and how people respond when under pressure. Gandhi and Long Walk to Freedom both have the virtue of presenting larger-than-life figures in a more realistic way, showing their flaws and contradictions - their humanity - in a way that is very helpful. — Jeffrey Pfeffer

God has not been trying an experiment on my faith or love in order to find out their quality. He knew it already. It was I who didn't. In this trial He makes us occupy the dock, the witness box, and the bench all at once. He always knew that my temple was a house of cards. His only way of making me realize the fact was to knock it down. — C.S. Lewis

Why look'e, young gentleman," said Toby, "when a man keeps himself so very ex-clusive as I have done, and by that means has a snug house over his head with nobody a-prying and smelling about it, it's rather a starling thing to have the honour of a wisit from a young gentleman (however respectable and pleasant a person he may be to play cards with at conweniency) circumstanced as you are. — Charles Dickens

path of descent becomes our own liberation. We are freed from the exhausting stance of defense. We are no longer compelled to be right and are thus relieved from the burden of maintaining some reputation. We are released from the idols of greed, control, and status. The pressure to protect the house of cards is alleviated when we take the lowest place. — Jen Hatmaker

Think of a hypothesis as a card. A theory is a house made of hypotheses. — Marilyn Vos Savant

Francis Underwood was entirely based on Richard III. When Michael Dobbs wrote 'House of Cards' in the original British series, Richard III is what he based the character on. — Kevin Spacey

The person he'd hurt the most though, ultimately, was himself.
It was his dreams that had come to nothing. His future that had folded before his eyes, like a house of cards. — Tilly Bagshawe

I watch 'House of Cards,' which was great. I don't watch a lot. I spend so much time doing it. — Joanne Kelly

She always spoke about "the people away" and how important it was to remember them and to keep in contact. She knew from listening to some of them when they came on summer holidays that at Christmas their thoughts turned to home and they loved to be remembered at that time. For others the cards was even more important; it provided the only link they had because they never made it home. I visualized my mother's Christmas cards as so many messengers winging their way to scattered family members all over the world from the nest from which they or their parents had all flown. She was the warm glow at the heart of our Christmas, but that warmth stretched much further than our house. — Alice Taylor

A tragedy is a tragedy, and at the bottom, all tragedies are stupid. Give me a choice and I'll take A Midsummer Night's Dream over Hamlet every time. Any fool with steady hands and a working set of lungs can build up a house of cards and then blow it down, but it takes a genius to make people laugh. — Stephen King

Hey, Nana ...
people's feelings change easily ...
what you see is a house of cards ...
nothing's sure,
and nothing lasts forever. — Ai Yazawa

Our liberty will not be secured at the sword's point ... We must secure it by making ourselves worthy of it. And when the people reaches that height, God will provide a weapon, the idols will be shattered, tyranny will crumble like a house of cards, and liberty will shine out like the first dawn. — Jose Rizal

Conor's grandma wasn't like other grandmas. He'd met Lily's grandma loads of times, and she was how grandmas were supposed to be: crinkly and smiley, with white hair and the whole lot. She cooked meals where she made three separate eternally boiled vegetable portions for everybody and would giggle in the corner at Christmas with a small glass of sherry and a paper crown on her head.

Conor's grandma wore tailored trouser suits, dyed her hair to keep out the grey, and said things that made no sense at all, like "Sixty is the new fifty" or "Classic cars need the most expensive polish." What did that even mean? She emailed birthday cards, would argue with waiters over wine, and still had a job. Her house was even worse, filled with expensive old things you could never touch, like a clock she wouldn't even let the cleaning lady dust. Which was another thing. What kind of grandma had a cleaning lady? — Patrick Ness

Google's not a real company. It's a house of cards. — Steve Ballmer

Advertisers don't want to be ignored, and they are drunk on our data, which is what Google and other large networks are really selling. The ads are almost a by-product; what companies really want to know is what antiperspirant a woman of 25-34 is most likely to purchase after watching 'House of Cards.' — Jeffrey Zeldman

She knew the way of things. She knew if
you weren't always stepping lightly as a bird the whole
world came apart to crush you. Like a house of cards.
Like a bottle against stones. Like a wrist pinned hard
beneath a hand with the hot breath smell of want and
wine. . . . — Patrick Rothfuss

The two things that got everyone's attention about the 'House of Cards' deal was the two-season commitment and David Fincher. After David Fincher directs a series for Netflix, no one else can say, 'Well, I'm not going to direct a series for the Internet.' — Ted Sarandos

I do not think you want too much sincerity in society. It would be like an iron girder in a house of cards. — W. Somerset Maugham

I'm usually late to the game on shows and watch them after they've aired. But I love 'House of Cards,' 'The Killing,' 'Orange Is the New Black,' loved 'True Detective,' and 'Arrested Development' when it was on. Also 'The Wire,' though I was way late to the game on that. — Finn Wittrock

Movies principally require the best of everybody, all at the same time, being the best they can be. Not just like five people being the best they've ever been, and 10 people not being the best they could be. It's like if everybody is either doing their greatest work, or the whole house of cards falls apart. — Steven Spielberg

At the ratings agency Standard & Poor's, where they've knowingly mispriced risk, one guy messages another: 'Let's hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of cards falters,' adding the emoticon ':O)'. — Paul Mason

Do you ever feel like a plastic bag Drifting throught the wind Wanting to start again Do you ever feel, feel so paper thin Like a house of cards One blow from caving in — Katy Perry

Christmas is a time of little time.
How we get there is a mystery.
Racing madly mall-to-mall, we climb
Into fields of sunlit harmony.
Shopping, cooking, clearing walks and yards,
Trimming house and tree while working, too;
Making phone calls, wrapping, writing cards,
As all worn out we do what we must do
So that this day of joy might joy renew. — Nick Gordon

I do think this is where television is going, and I think that it's awesome to be a part of a show like this because we are these pioneers into this new medium. And it's working. When you look at the success of House of Cards and Arrested Development, which I love, this is how people are watching television now. It's pretty cool to be a part of this whole thing. — Laura Prepon

Sometimes you're doing really well, then, after three or four years, everything inexplicably crashes like a house of cards and you have to rebuild it. It's not like you get to a point where you're all right for the rest of your life. — Patti Smith

Writer Somerset Maugham, after his parents deaths, spent a few stultifying years in his uncle's vicarage. Later, in his teens at a boarding-school, having lost his belief in the existence of God said: "The whole horrible structure, based not on the love of God, but on the fear of hell, tumbled down like a house of cards." — Selina Hastings, Countess Of Huntingdon

So, I'm thinking of a name for a villain that has a sense of humor. I thought of 'The Joker' as a name, and as soon as I thought that, I associate it with the playing card, as my family had a tradition of champion playing; my brother was a contract champion bridge player. There were always cards around the house. — Jerry Robinson

The gods tempt us. They offer us riches and sweet smelling women, tres leches, each milk sweeter than the one before. But you cannot beat the gods. The grander house and the bigger deal only mean more borrowed time, more risk. When you build your life on a house of cards, you never know when the joker will turn up. — Paul Levine

Then she's gone, and it feels like everything I've built here is seconds away from crumbling around me. Like a house of cards destroyed by a simple breath. And all I can think is if things are going to fall apart, I'm not going to stand here trying to catch the pieces. — Cora Carmack

The building is a tumbling house of cards behind me. The bus bitches are paper cutouts. — Jolene Stockman

She knew if you weren't always stepping lightly as a bird the whole world came apart to crush you. Like a house of cards. Like a bottle against stones. — Patrick Rothfuss

One of the reasons for this cataclysmic change of destinies was the inherent weakness of a decaying agricultural empire of the Mughals which after more than two hundred years of rule over vast areas of India, was at its terminal stage and needed a small push to crumble like a house of cards.That push was given by six East India Companies of different European countries which had extracted rights to trade with India from the Mughals but transformed themselves as the arbiters and protectors of several Indian states. In this process they not only became rich but also militarily strong because in the twilight years of the Mughal empire, deteriorating security environment necessitated to arm themselves to protect their economic interests. Because of their inherent superiority as representatives of rising industrial powers, they had access to modern techniques and technology of warfare, which turned out to be the decisive factor in capturing vast territories in India. — Shahid Hussain Raja

Today, people are having to spend so much of their money, to acquire a house and to get an education that they don't have enough to spend on goods and services, except by running into yet more debt on their credit cards and other borrowings. — Michael Hudson

The Eastern front is like a house of cards. If the front is broken through at one point all the rest will collapse. — Heinz Guderian

Remove the predators, and the whole ecosystem begins to crash like a house of cards. As the sharks disappear, the predator-prey balance dramatically shifts, and the health of our oceans declines. — Brian Skerry

Power is like a house of cards. Leave it alone and it will stand forever. But if you try to build it higher and higher, sooner or later it is bound to collapse. — Felix O. Hartmann

There is no escape for me now, I know. Everything is over. I had my run. I was a murderer, a beautiful one, but I lived in a house of cards all my life and now it's all coming back to punish me, and there is no escape. — Katherine Ewell

Clearly the success of the Netflix model, releasing the entire season of 'House of Cards' at once, proved one thing: The audience wants the control. They want the freedom. If they want to binge as they've been doing on 'House of Cards' and lots of other shows, we should let them binge. — Kevin Spacey

I have talked to more people who are in politics who have said to me, "[House of Cards] is closer than you can imagine. It's the most accurate description of how politics actually works that we've ever seen." I mean, West Wing - beautiful, wonderful idea of how democracy should work. But I've had more people in politics say they think House of Cards is closer. I - don't know whether to take that as a compliment or a sad state of affairs. — Kevin Spacey

You're a fucking idiot, Elish. A complete fucking idiot and your house of cards is falling down. — Quil Carter

As you know, the International Poker Tour, by its own admission, knows very little about poker games, one of which ended tragically last week when an IPT-sanctioned tournament aboard a yacht in Australia accidentally used tarot cards instead of playing cards. That's right, it's true! Apparently no one noticed until someone laid down a full house and the dealer died. — Elle Lothlorien

I would have been an excellent member of the Brady Bunch. I would have been Shaun, the well-behaved blond boy who caused no trouble and helped Alice in the kitchen, then trimmed the split ends off Marcia's hair. I would have not only washed Tiger, but then conditioned his fur. And I would have cautioned Jan against that tacky bracelet that caused the girls to lose the house-of-cards-building contest. * — Augusten Burroughs

If Marxist theory dictates that the personal is always political, the rebuttal of both 'The Americans' and 'House of Cards' is that the political is always personal: the sum total of our collective needs and desires, vows and betrayals. — Steve Erickson

Our relationship was built on a house of cards. One good blow and you find the pieces scatter in the wind quite easily. — Jaycee Dugard

Where does our investigation get its importance from, since it seems only to destroy everything interesting, that is, all that is great and important? (As it were all the buildings, leaving behind only bits of stone and rubble.) What we are destroying is nothing but houses of cards and we are clearing up the ground of language on which they stand. — Ludwig Wittgenstein

My favourite shows of the year are House of Cards, the Scandinavian versions of The Killing and The Bridge, and my guilty pleasure is everything MMA. Ultimate Fighter is amazing. — Ricky Gervais

I look at the white woman's cards and listen to her bold English words - dog, cat, house - and there is all the evidence of what is to come in my life. I am not to go the way of the two people I long for in the thick terror of the night. The first man I love and the first woman I adore, my father and my mother with their Spanish words, are not in these cards. The road before me is English and the next part too awful to ask aloud or even silently: What is so wrong with my parents that I am not to mimic their hands, their needs, not even their words? — Daisy Hernandez

Without faith, no faith without hope, no love without trust, no trust without love. Remove one and the entire human house of cards collapses. — Rick Yancey

I watched 'House of Cards' in three days - and only in three days because I had other responsibilities, like my daughter. I couldn't just sit there and watch the entire season in just one sitting. — Selenis Leyva

Whether Theresa May had stabbed has stabbed the former Mayor of London in the back and Michael Gove had stabbed him in the front. That's about it. It makes House of Cards look like Teletubbies. — Nigel Evans

The best part of shooting 'House of Cards' in Baltimore is eating lots of soft-shell crab. — Robin Wright

I tend to avoid the shows that focus on politics, just to get a break from it all, i tried watching the first couple episodes of 'House of Cards,' but I thought it was way over the top. Members of Congress aren't anything like Frank Underwood. Most of us are far less interesting. — Paul Ryan

I couldn't imagine something asking as much of me as 'House Of Cards.' It's a great warm-up for coming back to the screen. — Kevin Spacey

Making a movie is still very difficult in Hollywood, regardless of what you have and what level you're at. It is a house of cards, and things have to perfectly align. — Nat Faxon

If she lost it, the whole house of cards could come tumbling down. Fortunately, she had no intention of losing it; it would take too damned long to find it again, and she didn't have that kind of time. — Tanya Huff

We seem to feel as though the life our children have
that we have built for them
is just a delicate house of cards, held together by the most intricate balancing of all its carefully selected components, and that the slightest shock, the slightest jar to all our perfect orchestration, will bring the whole edifice crashing down. — Judith Warner

We have to find a new balance; otherwise even the moral edifice of the church is likely to fall like a house of cards, losing the freshness and fragrance of the Gospel. — Pope Francis

For every person that says, 'I love your work, and my daughter thinks you're great, and we watch all your movies,' and is very kind, there are 10 more that are like, 'Who are you? What's your name? Are you on 'House of Cards'?' — Anna Kendrick

The major international appeal for 'House of Cards' was kind of a surprise because it's a very American show. What we learned is that American politics is very American, but greed and corruption and all of that is very global. — Ted Sarandos

This may be hard to believe, coming from a black man, but I've never stolen anything. Never cheated on my taxes or at cards. Never snuck into the movies or failed to give back the extra change to a drugstore cashier indifferent to the ways of mercantilism and minimum-wage expectations. I've never burgled a house. Held up a liquor store. Never boarded a crowded bus or subway car, sat in a seat reserved for the elderly, pulled out my gigantic penis and masturbated to satisfaction with a perverted, yet somehow crestfallen, look on my face. But here I am, in the cavernous chambers of the Supreme Court of the United States of America, my car illegally and somewhat ironically parked on Constitution Avenue, my hands cuffed and crossed behind my back, my right to remain silent long since waived and said goodbye to as I sit in a thickly padded chair that, much like this country, isn't quite as comfortable as it looks. — Paul Beatty

Films like 'Bond' fund training schemes for film technicians of the future, and working on films themselves provides a great training ground for budding directors and cinematographers. If there's no money there for films to be made, it's like a house of cards, it all comes tumbling down. — Callum McDougall

Did I collect baseball cards? I've got 10 books full of plastic in my mother's house. All the Upper Decks, the Fleers, the Fleer Ultras. My grandfather brought me to the trade shows. I collected Marvel cards, too. — Action Bronson

Can you make a house of cards?" she asked.
"Yes," Violet said, and went on looking. This way Violet had of seizing first not the most obvious sense of what people said to her but some other, interior echo or reverse side of it was a thing that baffled and frustrated her husband, who sought in her sybilline responses to ordinary questions some truth he was sure Violet knew but couldn't quite enunciate. With his father-in-law's help, he had filled volumes with his searchings. Her children, though, hardly noticed it. Nora shifted from foot to foot for a moment waiting for the promised structure, and when it didn't appear forgot it. The clock on the mantelpiece chimed. — John Crowley