Danon Runyon (Guys and Dolls) was born 128 years ago today

I long ago came to the conclusion that all life is 6 to 5 against.
- Damon Runyon ("A Nice Price," Collier's, 8 September 1934)

I always claim the mission workers come out too early to catch any sinners on this part of Broadway. At such an hour the sinners are still in bed resting up from their sinning of the night before, so they will be in good shape for more sinning a little later on.
- Runyon ("The Idyll of Miss Sarah Brown," Colliers, 28 January 1933)

"My boy," he says, "always try to rub up against money, for if you rub up against money long enough, some of it may rub off on you."
- Runyon ("A Very Honorable Guy," Cosmopolitan, August, 1929)

One of these days ... a guy is going to come up to you and show you a nice brand-new deck of cards on which the seal is not yet broken, and this guy is going to offer to bet you that he can make the Jack of Spades jump out of the deck and squirt cider in your ear. But, son, do not bet this man, for as sure as you are standing there, you are going to end up with an earful of cider.
- Runyon (unsourced) (from the script of the 1955 movie version of Guys and Dolls)

The race is not always to the swift nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.*
- Runyon (attributed)

Today is the 128th anniversary of the birth of American journalist and short-story writer (Alfred) Damon Runyon (1884-1946) in Manhattan, Kansas. Runyon ran away from home - by then in Pueblo, Colorado - to serve in the Spanish-American War and later became a war correspondent, columnist, and feature-writer for the Hearst syndicate. Called "the prose laureate of the semi-literate," he wrote short stories about the gamblers, bookies, gangsters, and chorus girls of New York City, later collected in Guys and Dolls (1931), on which the famous Broadway musical is based. Shortly before his death, he wrote to his friends,

"You can keep the things of bronze and stone, and give me one man to remember me just once a year."

* N.B. The reference here is to Ecclesiastes 9:11:

"The race is not to the swift nor the battle to the strong... but time and chance happeneth to them all."

The opening number (Fugue for Tinhorns) of the 1955 film version of Guys and Dolls featuring the inimitable Stubby Kaye as Nicely-Nicely:

Damon Runyon:

Taken from Ed's Quotation of the Day, only available via email.  If you'd like to be added to his list, leave your email address in the comments.