Dealt Cards Quotes

We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt with. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding and my dear one, you and I have been granted a mighty generous one.

We are all dealt a hand at birth. A good hand can ultimately lose - just as a poor hand can win - but we must all play the cards the fate deals. The choices we face may not be the choices we want, but they are choices nonetheless.

Mother, who has an absolute belief that it is not the cards that one is dealt in life, it is how one plays them, is, by far, the highest card I was dealt.

In point of fact, life may be just a shaky expectation, inasmuch as everyone realizes that the cards have often been shuffled, well in advance.

It's not about the cards you're dealt, but how you play the hand.

We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand. If I don’t seem as depressed or morose as I should be, sorry to disappoint you.

There are two things in life you cannot choose. The first is your enemies; the second your family. Sometimes the difference between them is hard to see, but in the end time will show you that the cards you have been dealt could always have been worse.

You don't have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you're holding.

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.

Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will.

Life isn't fair, so you have to play the best game you can with the cards you're dealt.

But give me more credit than that. Someone else may have dealt the hand, but I picked it up off the table, I played every card, and I had my reasons.

While we can’t always engineer our own happy endings, we can learn how to be more happy than not with the cards we’ve been dealt.

They had parted as boys, and now life presented one of them with a fugitive and the other with a dying man. Both wondered whether this was due to the cards they'd been dealt or to the way they had played them.

You got dealt some crappy cards. But you're the one who has to decide how to play them.

Individuals are not stable things, they are fleeting. Chromosomes too are shuffled into oblivion, like hands of cards soon after they are dealt. But the cards themselves survive the shuffling. The cards are the genes. The genes are not destroyed by crossing-over, they merely change partners and march on. Of course they march on. That is their business. They are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When we have served our purpose we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time: genes are forever.

It doesn't matter what has happened to you, it matters what you do with what has happened to you. Life is like a poker game. You don't get to choose the cards you are dealt, but it's entirely up to you how to play the hand.

Fate is the hand of cards we’ve been dealt. Choice is how we play the hand.

My father once said we are all dealt a hand at birth. A good hand can ultimately lose - just as a poor hand can win - but we must all play the cards fate deals. The choices we face may not be the choices we want, but they are choices nonetheless.

Life will deal me many different hands, some good, some bad (maybe they've already been dealt), but from here on in, I'll be turning my own cards. —Alton Richard

Aye, well, we all play the cards we're dealt." "Some of us do. Some of us kill men with better cards and play theirs instead.

You can’t influence fate, or change what’s out of your control. But you can choose what you yourself do with the cards you’re dealt.

The way he saw it, poker and life had a lot in common. You played the cards you were dealt, figured the odds, took the gamble or not. And when your cards were shit, you bluffed if the pot was worth it, and if you had balls.

Yeah, it’s true we’re all dealt a set of cards. But it’s also true that it’s up to us to figure out how to play the hand.

You’re not responsible for the hand of cards you were dealt. You’re responsible for maxing out what you were given.

Life may deal you a bad hand or take away a good hand you were already dealt. The way you play the hand is how your life is defined. Just like in poker you can end up winning no matter how bad the cards are you have.

It’s to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It’s what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy ... we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What’s left? What else is there that hasn’t been dealt out like a pack of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what’s shared – she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she’s everybody’s and it don’t mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it’s held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it’s gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part of your brain where imagination glows like a filament in a lobe no bigger than a torch bulb. Pain.

We all get dealt cards. Some of us get better cards than others. And while it’s easy to get hung up on our cards, and feel we got screwed over, the real game lies in the choices we make with those cards, the risks we decide to take, and the consequences we choose to live with. People

Life's tough," Mia said with a shrug. "You play the cards you're dealt or you fold.

As far as I can see, in this world, you’re a fool for not using whatever gifts you’re given. It’s not as though you lied or cheated or stole to get Howard Marlowe as your father. That’s who he is; that’s who you are. You got dealt a bad card when you were bitten—so use one of the better cards you have in your hand to make up for it.

If you are unwilling or unable to pivot and adapt to the incessant, fluctuating tides of life, you will not enjoy being here. Sometimes, people try to play the cards that they wish they had, instead of playing the hand they’ve been dealt. The capacity to adjust and improvise is arguably the single most critical human ability.

All right. I'll bite. Here's what I think, with the caveat that I may be wrong. I think we're here to make the world a better place than we found it. I think we don't always deserve the cards we're dealt, good or bad. But we are judged by how we play the cards we're dealt. Those of us with a bum deal that makes it harder to do good -- we just have to work a little more is all. There's no destiny. There's just muddling through without doing to much damage.

The real magic - the magic we'd lived with all our lives, my mother's magic of charms and cantrips, of salt by the door and a red silk sachet to placate the little gods - had turned sour on us that summer, somehow, like a spider that turns from good luck to bad at the stroke of midnight, spinning its web to catch our dreams. And for every little spell of charm, for every card dealt and every rune cast and every sign scratched against a doorway to divert the path of malchance, the wind just blew a little harder, tugging at our clothes, sniffing at us like a hungry dog, moving us here and moving us there.

They taught me to embrace the cards you are dealt or it will eat you alive. If you go to the heart of your own matter, you will find only by loving and helping do you have peace from your own trauma.

You can’t change the cards you were dealt, but you can always choose how you play your hand.

It’s not the hand you’re dealt that matters. It’s how you play the cards.

It’s not the cards you’re dealt, it’s all about how you play them. I just need to savour life more, try to fix less, laugh more and always remember to just be in the moment.

Sometimes it didn't matter how much gumption you had. What mattered were the cards you'd been dealt.

You don’t have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you’re holding.

In the abstract, life is a mixture of chance and choice. Chance can be thought of as the cards you are dealt in life. Choice is how you play them. I chose to investigate blackjack. As a result, chance offered me a new set of unexpected opportunities.

I’ve been dealt a fuller set of cards than the ones passed to Lily and Daisy. They’re just as strong, if not stronger. I’ve always been here as extra reinforcement, and however old we become, however gray we are, that won’t ever change.

Sometimes I wonder how you can stand being just a dog..." "You play with the cards you're dealt... Whatever that means.

That is what it is. We can't change it. We just have to decide how we'll respond. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.

At some point in our lives we all have to learn to deal with the cards we’ve been dealt.

It's not about the cards you're dealt, but how you play the hand. - Randy Pausch “The Last Lecture

People think that the South is racist, and it was, and some parts still are, but for the most part, we've dealt with our history. The biggest racists I've ever met aren't here, they're in politics, and they are smug bastards. They're the ones that are quick to play the race card, the ones that pimp poverty. Those are the real bigots.

Those who sought her never found her, yet she was known to come to the aid of those in greatest need. And, then again, sometimes she didn’t. She was like that. She didn’t like the clicking of rosaries, but was attracted to the sound of dice. No man knew what She looked like, although there were many times when a man who was gambling his life on the turn of the cards would pick up the hand he had been dealt and stare Her full in the face. Of course, sometimes he didn’t. Among all the gods she was at one and the same time the most courted and the most cursed.

Ah yes," Gabe said, "Pinter is ever the gallant when it comes to the ladies. He wouldn't risk leaving us alone with poor Miss Lake, for the fear one of us might spirit her off to our lair." "Why?" Miss Lake asked, with a lift of her brow. "Do you three make a habit of spiriting women off?" "Only on Tuesdays and Fridays," Masters said. "Seeing as how it's Wednesday, your safe." "Unless you're wearing a blue garter, madam," Gabe quipped. "On Wednesdays, Masters and I have a great fondness for blue garters. Are your gaters blue, Miss Lake?" "Only on Mondays and Thursdays." She dealt thirteen cards apiece to the two of them, then put the rest aside as the stock, turning the top card faceup. "Sorry gentlemen. I guess you'll have to spirit off some other woman.

In life you can be dealt a winning hand of cards and you can find a way to lose, and you can be dealt a losing hand and find a way to win. True in art and true in life: you pretty much make your own destiny. If you are by nature an optimistic person, which I am, that puts you in a better position to be lucky in life.

It didn’t matter what cards you were dealt. The City of Sin was a game, and the only way to win was to stack the cards in your favor.

If you get dealt a bad hand, fold and ask for new cards. There’s no sense in hanging on to it for years, hoping things will change.

We can't change it. We just have to decide how we'll respond. We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand" - From The Last Lecture Randy Pauch

I didn't play the cards I was dealt. I changed the cards.

It's like the Negro in America seeing the white man win all the time. He's a professional gambler; he has all the cards and the odds stacked on his side, and he has always dealt to our people from the bottom of the deck.

No longer was I consumed by being a prisoner in my mind. I was not willing to give in to the cards I was dealt. I took my power back and I had control of the cards, and as I held the cards in my hand, I shuffled them to my liking. I knew I wasn’t always going have the best hand every single time, but I knew I had the power to shuffle when I needed to reexamine my hand.

Reflecting on my Autism - The processing and communication issues that I have I look at it like this I have had set cards dealt to me and I'm going play them to the best of my abilities.

we play the cards we’ve been dealt—as Isabel in Secrets of a Charmed Life says—based on finite knowledge, and while being largely unaware that everyone around us is playing their own cards.

Well, kid," Aahz said, sweeping me with an appraising stare, "it looks like we're stuck with each other. The setup isn't ideal, but it's what we've got. Time to bite the bullet and play with the cards we're dealt. You do know what cards are, don't you?" "Of course," I said, slightly wounded. "Good." "What's a bullet?

Their journey wasn’t complete. If their relationship had been a poker tournament, unquestionably, they’d not been dealt the best cards. When faced with the same odds, as Tony and Claire, many players would have folded and walked away. They hadn’t—they’d continued to play. In the process they’d grown and changed. At one time, they were opponents, strategizing against one another, now they were teammates, yet their tournament wasn’t over. It was too early to declare the winner. They both knew there were more cards to be revealed.

Birth deals us out a hand of cards, but as important as their value is the place we are dealt them in.

Life may not have dealt you a great set of cards... but who says the one with better cards will win?

We can't change the cards we're dealt, just how we play the hand.

I see life in the same terms. We all get dealt cards. Some of us get better cards than others. And while it’s easy to get hung up on our cards, and feel we got screwed over, the real game lies in the choices we make with those cards, the risks we decide to take, and the consequences we choose to live with. People who consistently make the best choices in the situations they’re given are the ones who eventually come out ahead in poker, just as in life. And it’s not necessarily the people with the best cards.

For as much as Hillary Clinton might hate admitting this about Monica Lewinisky, Eleanor Roosevelt about Missy Le Hand, Queen Alexandra about Lillie Langtry, Lady Nelson about Emma Hamilton, or Jackie about Marilyn, the reality is that despite their intrinsic animosity toward each other, on a a deep level, the wife and the mistress generally have far more in common than they might care to admit and could, had fate dealt them different cards, even been true friends.

It’s really a rather simple thing to bring balance to my anger. All I need to do is remember that the ‘hand of cards’ that have been dealt to me pale in comparison to the ‘deck of cards’ that I’ve thrown at others.

No easy way out. No escape. From yourself. You had to LEARN to DEAL with the cards you were dealt. Had to learn the hard way that the world doesn't OWE you a fucking thing. Not a reason, nor excuse. No apologies. Had to learn that some forms of insanity run in the family, pure genetics, polluted lifelines, full of disease. Profanity. Addiction. Co-addiction. Inability to deal with reality, what the fuck ever that's suppose to mean when you're born into an emotional ghetto of endless abuse. Where the only way out is in...deep, deep inside, so you poke holes in your skin, thinking that if you could just concentrate the pain it wouldn't remain an all-consuming surround which suffocates you from the first breath of day to your last dying day. Day in. Day out. Day in. Day out. I knew all about it.

For people who dealt largely in dreams, his father was fond of observing, realtors were a surprisingly unromantic bunch, like card counters in a Vegas casino.

Destiny plays its cards in a way that no one can comprehend.

You don't have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you're holding.

My father once said we are all dealt a hand at birth. A good hand can ultimately lose—just as a poor hand can win—but we must all play the cards fate deals.

Enlightenment writer and philosopher Voltaire likened life to a game of cards. Players must accept the cards dealt to them. However, once they have those cards in hand, they alone choose how they will play them. They decide what risks and actions to take.

No,” Joan vowed. She grabbed Bash’s shirt. “I don’t want this. Didn’t want this to happen.” Screams resonated. Bash continued quietly, “None of us do. That’s not up to us. We have to decide what we’re going to do with what we’re given. Play the cards dealt to us.

I've been thrown into a turbulent triangle, but even though I have deep feelings for Shiray doesn't mean my feelings will disappear for Melanie immediately. Fate has really dealt me a cruel hand of cards.

I could tell Marco was a woman-hater, because in spite of all the models and TV starlets in the room that night he paid attention to nobody but me. Not out of kindness or even curiosity, but because I'd happened to be dealt to him, like a playing card in a pack of identical cards.

The reality is that everyone is responsible for their own life. We’re dealt certain cards at birth, and we play our hand; some of us lose, but others may play skillfully from the same bad hand and triumph. Our cards determine who we are: age, gender, race, family, nationality, etc., and we can’t change them, only play them to the best of our abilities. The game is marked by challenges and chances, strategizing and cheating.

I gave you too much power because I always yearned for your love, but I guess the love card wasn’t meant for me to have in my life. I always thought I was dealt a bad hand because that card never appeared in the deck.

He did not believe in luck at all, good or bad. Gamblers believed in luck, and he was not a gambler. Never had been, never would be. John Henry Holliday believed in mathematics, in statistics, in the computation of odds. Fifty-two cards in a deck. Make it easy. Say it's fifty. Any card has a 2 percent chance of being dealt from a full deck. Keep track of what's out. Adjust the probabilities as the hand progresses.

A stable, loving family is something that should absolutely, fundamentally never be taken for granted! I am lucky that I got dealt some cards that showed me what it's like to not have family, and I am much luckier to now have the chance to create my own deck!

The unknowable lives in a pack of cards after it has been fairly shuffled but before it has been dealt, when all the possibilities are open, and when each possibility matters.

There is no why. You don't have a right to the cards you believe you should have been dealt. You have an obligation to play the hell out of the ones you're holding.

So no more whining about the cards you were dealt, the great defeats you suffered, or any other circumstances. Countless people have more disadvantages and greater obstacles than you, and yet they’re wealthier and more fulfilled. Luck is an equal-opportunity distributor. Lady luck shines on all, but rather than having your umbrella overhead, you’ve got to have your face to the sky. When it comes down to it, it’s all you, baby. There’s no other way around it.

These feminine vessels we inhabited: why did nobody expect them to contain unfeminine feelings? Why could we, too, not be furious and scornful and entirely altered by grief? Why must we accept the cards we had been dealt? I heard the clock chime two in the hall, and attempted to drag myself from the past into the present. But perhaps we never could entirely. Perhaps we were always made up of both, and they fitted perfectly together, like a jagged little heart.

Why does this always happen?” Royce asked. “Why are we always hanging on a wall, waiting to die by slow vivisection? I just want to point out that this was your idea—again.” “I’ve been waiting for that. But I believe I told you not to come.” Hadrian shifted in his chains and sighed. “I don’t suppose there’s much chance of a beautiful princess coming in here and saving us again.” “That card’s been dealt.

This time I watch him carefully, calculating everyone of his movements. Everything seems flawless, until I go to pick up my dealt cards. I noticed some shift his weight forward and scratch his leg. I swear to God it looks if you take something out from underneath his ass. "Wait a minute." I raise a finger, setting my cards down as I lean forward. "Did you just take the card out from under your ass?" "No why would I do that?" He lifts the two cards he has as he presses his hands innocently to his chest. "Besides, where would I put the other cards I dealt?" "How the hell should I know," I say. "Maybe if your ass.

Marriage is one of our most defining moments because so much is wrapped up in it. If building a career is like spending twelve hours at the blackjack table—seeing the cards as you make your decisions, playing each hand with current winnings in mind, having a new opportunity to take a chance or play it safe with every card dealt—then choosing a mate is like walking over to the roulette wheel and putting all your chips on red 32.

.....youth dies when you stop believing that you can affect the hand you're dealt at birth. The reality is, sometimes you just draw shitty cards, and no matter how much you plan, and no matter how hard you work to be good and to go to church and to think the right thoughts, there's nothing in the world you can do to get a reshuffle.

Life is just a big game of Texas hold'em, unexpected things may arise that may suite you or destroy you. You gotta make the best of the cards your dealt, adjust accordingly, and always understand that you control your decisions.

Dear Fathers of the Fatherless Children, Chief Guardians take on the responsibilities of being both the mother and father. I’ve noticed that a lot of people say, a mother can’t be a father. That could be very well true, however, we do not have a choice but to “play” the “father role” to the best of our ability. We are the mothers, but the fathers of the fatherless children cowardly volunteer our services. It’s hard enough being a mother, but it is harder trying to play the “father’s” role as well. However, those are the cards we were dealt. I can say, for the sake of the matter—no, we do not know how to be a “father”, but we do the best we can. That is why it is imperative that all fathers take responsibly and execute their role full-time.

The truth that people are only as good as the world lets them be. You’re not inherently good and I’m not inherently bad. We’re just working through the cards life dealt us. So putting you in this position, dealing you these cards—what does a good guy do now? It’s not about the crash, Bill. It’s about the choice. It’s about good people seeing they’re no different from bad people.” He looked from Bill to Carrie. “You’ve just always had the luxury of choosing to be good.

Sitting at the table, watching the cards being dealt, I heard a man say that the difference between an amateur and a pro is that the pro doesn't have an emotional reaction to losing anymore. It's just the other side of winning. I guess I'm a farmer now, because I'm used to loss like this, to death of all kinds, and to rot. It's just the other side of life. It is your first big horse and all he meant to you, and it is also his bones and skin breaking down in the compost pile, almost ready to be spread on the fields.

Venerable are letters, infinitely brave, forlorn, and lost. Life would split asunder without them. "Come to tea, come to dinner, what's the truth of the story? have you heard the news? life in the capital is gay; the Russian dancers...." These are our stays and props. These lace our days together and make of life a perfect globe. And yet, and yet... when we go to dinner, when pressing finger-tips we hope to meet somewhere soon, a doubt insinuates itself; is this the way to spend our days? the rare, limited, so soon dealt out to us - drinking tea? dining out? And the notes accumulate. And the telephones ring. And everywhere we go wires and tubes surround us to carry the voices that try to penetrate before the last card is dealt. "Try to penetrate" for as we lift the cup, shake the hand, express the hope, something whispers, Is this all? Can I never know, share, be certain? Am I doomed all my days to write letters, send voices, which fall upon the tea-table, fade upon the passage, making appointments, while life dwindles, to come and dine? Yet letters are venerable; and the telephone valiant, for the journey is a lonely one, and if bound together by notes and telephones we went in company, perhaps- who know? - we might talk by the way.

The world was in a confused turmoil-wars, H-bombs, confrontations, fear, hate, hate. And Hollywood was feeding the confusion with a steady diet of sex, violence, and lewdness. What wisdom needed, to catch up with our runaway technology, was time. And time might be bought not with violence, but with compassion-that divine unguent that lubricates and soothes our abrasive human hates. Compassion might just possibly slow down the ticking till we could defuse the world with reason. And we had an outside chance of buying a little precious extra time by filming the life of Schnozzola, the great compassionate clown. A chance that got lost among stars and their satellites. Pity Pity. Now what would I do? Certainly the world didn't need more films about sex, violence, and lewdness. Judging by contemporary Hollywood films, the United States was made up of sexpots, homosexuals, lesbians, Marquis de Sades, junkies too! too! beautiful people, country-club liberals, draft-card burners, and theatrical and religious figures bleeding make-believe blood for cause and camera. "Shock films," they called them; "skin flicks" that dealt not with the humorous, honest, robust, Rabelaisian earthiness that nurtures life, but with the cologned, pretentious, effete, adulterated crud that pollutes life.

It was a battle, Jack realized, between the composite psyche of the school and the individual psyches of the children, and the former held all the key cards. A child who did not properly respond was assumed to be autistic—that is, oriented according to a subjective factor that took precedence over his sense of objective reality. And that child wound up by being expelled from the school; he went, after that, to another sort of school entirely, one designed to rehabilitate him: he went to Camp Ben-Gurion. He could not be taught, he could only be dealt with as ill.

Never believe it, Hal. Never believe your own lies. Because superstition was a trap—that was what she had learned, in the years of plying her trade on the pier. Touching wood, crossing fingers, counting magpies—they were lies, all of them. False promises, designed to give the illusion of control and meaning in a world in which the only destiny came from yourself. You can’t predict the future, Hal, her mother had reminded her, time and time again. You can’t influence fate, or change what’s out of your control. But you can choose what you yourself do with the cards you’re dealt. That was the truth, Hal knew. The painful, uncompromising truth. It was what she wanted to shout at clients, at the ones who came back again and again looking for answers that she could not give. There is no higher meaning. Sometimes things happen for no reason. Fate is cruel, and arbitrary. Touching wood, lucky charms, none of it will help you see the car you never saw coming, or avoid the tumor you didn’t realize you had. Quite the opposite, in fact. For in that moment that you turn your head to look for the second magpie, in the hope of changing your fortune from sorrow to joy—that’s when you take your attention away from the things you can change, the crossing light, the speeding car, the moment you should have turned back. The people who came to her booth were seeking meaning and control—but they were looking in the wrong place. When they gave themselves over to superstition, they were giving up on shaping their own destiny.

Bruce has wrestled with his moods, and a psyche genetically prone to extremes, for most of his adult life. Decades of psychotherapy helped reveal and cast light on some of his most primal traumas and conflicts, but his raw moods, and occasional descents into full-blown depression, never quite went away. "You go through periods of being good, then something stimulates it," he says. "The clock, some memory. You never know. The mind wants to link all your feelings to a cause. I'm feeling that because I'm doing this, or because that happened." Eventually Bruce realized that his worst moods had nothing to do with what was actually taking place in his life. Awful, stressful things could happen - conflicts, stress, disappointments, death - and he'd be unflappable. Then things would be peaceful and easy and he'd find himself on his knees. "You're going along fine, and then boom, it hits you. Things that just come from way down in the well. Completely noncasual, but it's part of your DNA, part of the way your body cycles." Bruce knows his particular brain chemistry will never leave him completely in the clear. "You manage it, you learn and evolve, but another recognition you gotta have is that these are the cards you were dealt," he says. "These things are never going to be out of your life. You gotta be constantly vigilant and realistic about these things.

Never believe it, Hal. Never believe your own lies. Because superstition was a trap—that was what she had learned, in the years of plying her trade on the pier. Touching wood, crossing fingers, counting magpies—they were lies, all of them. False promises, designed to give the illusion of control and meaning in a world in which the only destiny came from yourself. You can’t predict the future, Hal, her mother had reminded her, time and time again. You can’t influence fate, or change what’s out of your control. But you can choose what you yourself do with the cards you’re dealt. That was the truth, Hal knew. The painful, uncompromising truth. It was what she wanted to shout at clients, at the ones who came back again and again looking for answers that she could not give. There is no higher meaning. Sometimes things happen for no reason. Fate is cruel, and arbitrary. Touching wood, lucky charms, none of it will help you see the car you never saw coming, or avoid the tumor you didn’t realize you had. Quite the opposite, in fact. For in that moment that you turn your head to look for the second magpie, in the hope of changing your fortune from sorrow to joy—that’s when you take your attention away from the things you can change, the crossing light, the speeding car, the moment you should have turned back. The people who came to her booth were seeking meaning and control—but they were looking in the wrong place. When they

The average household income in America is right around $50,000 per year, according to the Census Bureau. Joe and Suzy Average would invest $7,500 (15 percent) per year or $625 per month. If you make $50,000 per year and have no payments except the house mortgage and live on a budget, can you invest $625 per month? Follow me here. If Joe and Suzy invest $625 per month with no match into Roth IRAs from age thirty to age seventy, they will have $7,588,545 tax-FREE! That is almost $8 million. What if I’m half-wrong? What if you end up with only $4 million? What if I’m six times wrong? Sure beats the 97 out of 100 sixty-five-year-olds who can’t write a check for $600! I would submit to you that Joe and Suzy are well below average. Why? In our example they started at the average household income in America, and in forty years of work never got a raise. They saved 15 percent of income and never increased it by one dollar. There is no excuse to retire without financial dignity in the United States today. Most of you will have well over $2 million pass through your hands in your working lifetime, so do something about catching some of that money. Gayle asked me one day if it was too late for her to start saving. Gayle wasn’t twenty-seven like Joe and Suzy. She was fifty-seven years old, but with her attitude you would have thought this lady was 107. Harold Fisher had a much better outlook at age one hundred than Gayle did at age fifty-seven. Life had dealt her some blows and had knocked most of the hope out of her. A Total Money Makeover is not a magic show. You start where you are, and you do the steps. These steps work if you are twenty-seven or fifty-seven, and they don’t change. Gayle might be starting the retirement investing step at sixty that Joe and Suzy start at thirty years old. Gayle was unwise to enter her sixties without an emergency fund and with credit-card debt and a car payment. She, like all of us, couldn’t save when she has debt and no umbrella for when it rains. Would it have been better for Gayle to start when she was twenty-seven or even forty-seven? Obviously. But once she was done with the pity party, she still needed to start with Baby Step One and follow The Total Money Makeover step-by-step to put herself in the best position possible.

The old woman sat in her leather recliner, the footrest extended, a dinner tray on her lap. By candlelight, she turned the cards over, halfway through a game of Solitaire. Next door, her neighbors were being killed. She hummed quietly to herself. There was a jack of spades. She placed it under the queen of hearts in the middle column. Next a six of diamonds. It went under the seven of spades. Something crashed into her front door. She kept turning the cards over. Putting them in their right places. Two more blows. The door burst open. She looked up. The monster crawled inside, and when it saw her sitting in the chair, it growled. “I knew you were coming,” she said. “Didn’t think it’d take you quite so long.” Ten of clubs. Hmm. No home for this one yet. Back to the pile. The monster moved toward her. She stared into its small, black eyes. “Don’t you know it’s not polite to just walk into someone’s house without an invitation?” she asked. Her voice stopped it in its tracks. It tilted its head. Blood—from one of her neighbor’s no doubt—dripped off its chest onto the floor. Belinda put down the next card. “I’m afraid this is a one-player game,” she said, “and I don’t have any tea to offer you.” The monster opened its mouth and screeched a noise out of its throat like the squawk of a terrible bird. “That is not your inside voice,” Belinda snapped. The abby shrunk back a few steps. Belinda laid down the last card. “Ha!” She clapped. “I just won the game.” She gathered up the cards into a single deck, split it, then shuffled. “I could play Solitaire all day every day,” she said. “I’ve found in my life that sometimes the best company is your own.” A growl idled again in the monster’s throat. “You cut that right out!” she yelled. “I will not be spoken to that way in my own home.” The growl changed into something almost like a purr. “That’s better,” Belinda said as she dealt a new game. “I apologize for yelling. My temper sometimes gets the best of me.

I would like to see you cheat,” Elizabeth said impulsively, smiling at him. His hands stilled, his eyes intent on her face. “I beg your pardon?” “What I meant,” she hastily explained as he continued to idly shuffle the cards, watching her, “is that night in the card room at Charise’s there was mention of someone being able to deal a card from the bottom of the deck, and I’ve always wondered if you could, if it could…” She trailed off, belatedly realizing she was insulting him and that his narrowed, speculative gaze proved that she’d made it sound as if she believed him to be dishonest at cards. “I beg your pardon,” she said quietly. “That was truly awful of me.” Ian accepted her apology with a curt nod, and when Alex hastily interjected, “Why don’t we use the chips for a shilling each,” he wordlessly and immediately dealt the cards. Too embarrassed even to look at him, Elizabeth bit her lip and picked up her hand. In it there were four kings. Her gaze flew to Ian, but he was lounging back in his chair, studying his own cards. She won three shillings and was pleased as could be. He passed the deck to her, but Elizabeth shook her head. “I don’t like to deal. I always drop the cards, which Celton says is very irritating. Would you mind dealing for me?” “Not at all,” Ian said dispassionately, and Elizabeth realized with a sinking heart that he was still annoyed with her. “Who is Celton?” Jordan inquired. “Celton is a groom with whom I play cards,” Elizabeth explained unhappily, picking up her hand. In it there were four aces. She knew it then, and laughter and relief trembled on her lips as she lifted her face and stared at her betrothed. There was not a sign, not so much as a hint anywhere on his perfectly composed features that anything unusual had been happening. Lounging indolently in his chair, he quirked an indifferent brow and said, “Do you want to discard and draw more cards, Elizabeth?” “Yes,” she replied, swallowing her mirth, “I would like one more ace to go with the ones I have.” “There are only four,” he explained mildly, and with such convincing blandness that Elizabeth whooped with laughter and dropped her cards. “You are a complete charlatan!” she gasped when she could finally speak, but her face was aglow with admiration. “Thank you, darling,” he replied tenderly. “I’m happy to know your opinion of me is already improving.” The laughter froze in Elizabeth’s chest, replaced by warmth that quaked through her from head to foot. Gentlemen did not speak such tender endearments in front of other people, if at all. “I’m a Scot,” he’d whispered huskily to her long ago. “We do.” The Townsendes had launched into swift, laughing conversation after a moment of stunned silence following his words, and it was just as well, because Elizabeth could not tear her gaze from Ian, could not seem to move. And in that endless moment when their gazes held, Elizabeth had an almost overwhelming desire to fling herself into his arms. He saw it, too, and the answering expression in his eyes made her feel she was melting. “It occurs to me, Ian,” Jordan joked a moment later, gently breaking their spell, “that we are wasting our time with honest pursuits.” Ian’s gaze shifted reluctantly from Elizabeth’s face, and then he smiled inquisitively at Jordan. “What did you have in mind?” he asked, shoving the deck toward Jordan while Elizabeth put back her unjustly won chips. “With your skill at dealing whatever hand you want, we could gull half of London. If any of our victims had the temerity to object, Alex could run them through with her rapier, and Elizabeth could shoot him before he hit the ground.” Ian chuckled. “Not a bad idea. What would your role be?” “Breaking us out of Newgate!” Elizabeth laughed. “Exactly.