“For me, chess is at the same time a game, a sport, a science and an art. And perhaps even more than that,. There is someting hard to explain to those who do not know the game well. One must first learn to play it correctly in order to savor its richness.”

Had I not played the Sicilian with Black I could have saved myself the trouble of studying for more than 20 years all the more popular lines of this opening, which comprise probably more than 25 percent of all published opening theory!

A chess player never has a heart attack in a good position.

Most of all I like “bad” lines, that is those considered bad, in my opinion unjustly, by theory. The reason for the last quotation marks is that most so-called theory is only a collection of examples from master practice.

The books say that it is not so serious to lose time in a closed position; I am lucky, since these comments have not harmed me too much.

Chess is a beautiful mistress.

All chess masters have on occasion played a magnificent game and then lost it by a stupid mistake, perhaps in time pressure and it may perhaps seem unjust that all their beautiful ideas get no other recognition than a zero on the tournament table.

In my opinion the Open variation is absolutely correct – and more interesting than the Closed.

The stomach is an essential part of the Chess master

A gambit never becomes sheer routine as long as you fear you may lose the king and pawn ending!

One charming characteristic of many flank attacks I could mention is that they do not very often lead to simplification: if the attack is parried, there usually are still opportunities left for initiating action in another sector.

I often play a move I know how to refute.

Lack of patience is probably the most common reason for losing a game, or drawing games that should have been won.

A draw may be the beautiful and logical result of fine attacks and parries; and the public ought to appreciate such games, in contrast, of course, to the fear-and-laziness draws.

I’m pro-life, in the sense that chaos seems like life to me and order seems like death.

We’re telling a story. And the demands of that are different from the demands of a documentary. The audience must believe in order to keep faith in the story.

When once a decision is reached and execution is the order of the day, dismiss absolutely all responsibility and care about the outcome.

Take hold of your life and order yourself to be valiant.

When you embrace the mystery and open yourself to it, a new life is created, resistant to the old problems.

When Chuck House wanted to develop the oscilloscope for HP, David Packard told him to abandon the project. Chuck went on “vacation” and came back with $2 million in orders.

I am troubled… that someone would sell a book, trading on their former service as a government insider with access to our nation’s most valuable intelligence, in order to profit from the suffering that this nation endured on September 11, 2001.

The intellectual life of man consists almost wholly in his substitution of conceptual order for the perceptual order in which his experience originally comes.