"Games don't mean anything."

"It was cold, they argued over the temperature, John was from Minnesota and had slept as a boy with his window open.  So Frank shivered, a down coverlet draped over his shoulders, his feet blocks of ice.  They played chess and Frank won.  John laughed.  How stupid, he said.

What do you mean?

Games don't mean anything.

Are you sure?  Sometimes life seems like a kind of game to me.

John shook his head.  In games there are rules, but in life the rules keep changing.  You could put your bishop out there to mate the other guy's king, and he could leap down and whisper in your bishop's ear, and suddenly it's playing for him, and moving like a rook.  And you're fucked.

Frank nodded.  He had taught these things to John."

-- Kim Stanley Robinson, Red Mars