Well, I’m not sure I know what you mean by a prima donna, but if something doesn’t interest me or if someone bores me, or if I think they’re a phony, I just don’t bother with them, that’s all.
I can remember times coming home from a chess club at four in the morning when I was half asleep and half dead and forcing myself to pray an hour and study an hour. You know, I was half out of my mind-stoned almost.
In chess so much depends on opening theory, so the champions before the last century did not know as much as I do and other players do about opening theory.
I object to being called a chess genius because I consider myself to be an all around genius who just happens to play chess, which is rather different.
I usually never stay at the board after a game. Especially against Spassky. I made a dumb suggestion and he refuted it instantly! I know I’m going to have to play him some day and it was really stupid to look like such a jerk in front of him.
The United States is evil. It has to be brought down, it has to be eliminated from the world scene. They are the ones who have made the world the hell that it is.
Sometimes girls write me. One girl in Yugoslavia sent me a whole slew of love letters. I don’t know how she got my address. She was in a crowd watching me play. She says when I left there the stars fell out of the sky over Yugoslavia, or something like that.
Too many times, people don’t try their best. They don’t have the keen spirit; the winning spirit. And once you make it you’ve got to guard your reputation – every day go in like an unknown to prove yourself. That’s why I don’t clown around.
