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.
I’m really not interested in that. I want to keep the old chess flavor. I want to keep the old chess game. But just making a change so the starting positions are mixed, so it’s not degenerated down to memorisation and prearrangement like it is today.
The Russians have held my title for ten years and they’re going to be in for it when I win the Championship. They’re going to have to wait and play under my conditions.
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.
