Editing Damon Runyon (section)

==Gambling==
Gambling, particularly on [[craps]] or horse races, was a common theme of Runyon's works, and he was a notorious gambler. One of his paraphrases from a line in [[Ecclesiastes]] ran: "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's how the smart money bets."

A heavy drinker as a young man, he seems to have quit drinking soon after arriving in New York, after his drinking nearly cost him the courtship of the woman who became his first wife, Ellen Egan. He remained a heavy smoker.

His best friend was mobster accountant [[Otto Berman]], and he incorporated Berman into several of his stories under the alias "Regret, the horse player". When Berman was killed in a hit on Berman's boss, [[Dutch Schultz]], Runyon quickly assumed the role of damage control for his deceased friend, mostly by correcting erroneous press releases, including one that stated Berman was one of Schultz's gunmen, to which Runyon replied, "Otto would have been as effective a bodyguard as a two-year-old."