“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.”

A strong memory, concentration, imagination, and a strong will is required to become a great Chess player

Romance is an illusion. Well, romance is not a complete illusion, but it’s ephemeral. It does not last.

Now my only income is a few royalty cheques from my books.

If I win a tournament, I win it by myself. I do the playing. Nobody helps me

I prepare myself well. I know what I can do before I go in. I’m always confident.

I’ve always been very interested in fashion, but it is extremely important to me that the social and environment issues associated with the production of fashionable clothing are addressed.

I felt that chess… is a science in the form of a game… I consider myself a scientist. I wanted to be treated like a scientist.

People have been playing against me below their strength for fifteen years.

There’s no luck involved in chess. You just have to work at it.

I think it’s almost definite that the game is a draw theoretically.

Nobody has single-handedly done more for the US image than me…

When I won the World Championship in ’72, the United States had an image of, you know, a football country, baseball country, but nobody thought of it as an intellectual country.

I studied that first Karpov-Kasparov match for a year and a half before I cracked it, what they were doing, and discovered that it was all prearranged move-by-move. There’s no doubt of it in my mind.

Genius. It’s a word. What does it really mean? If I win I’m a genius. If I don’t, I’m not.

A piece of garbage like Kasparov might be called a chess genius, but he’s like an idiot savant. Outside of chess he knows nothing.

I want to see the U.S. wiped out. Death to the U.S.

I think it’s almost definite that the game is a draw theoretically.

But that’s the thing about basketball: you don’t play games on paper.

My overall knowledge of football specifications, the overall process that happens on game day with the footballs is very limited.

All the backs in the history of this game are the same when there isn’t any hole to run through.

Good basketball always starts with good defense!

Jack Nicklaus is playing an entirely different game, and one which I’m not even familiar with.

I played in Joe Louis in a playoff game. I played there when the roof caved in for half a season. The facility is great for basketball because it goes straight up, so you feel like the fans are on top of you.

At one point, I said to the officials that you guys haven’t called walking for 20 years, now you don’t know what it is. When you call walking, you’re about half right.