ZMskyuza

“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 (the Bible) an hour. You know, I was half out of my head-stoned almost.”

“[Capablanca] wanted to change the rules already, back in the twenties, because he said chess was getting played out. He was right. Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorization and prearrangement. It’s a terrible game now. Very uncreative.”

“They have nothing on me, those guys. They can't even touch me. Some people rate them better than me. That really bugs me. They think that no Americans play chess. When I meet those Russian patzers I'll put them in their place.”

“I'll play a lot, stake matches. Not like the Russians. They win the championship and then hide for three years. Every few months, anyway twice a year, I'd like to get up a purse and meet a challenger. It's good for the game, keeps up interest in chess, and it's good for the bank account. I want to get some money together. Like take professional football. All these athletes making hundreds of thousands of dollars. Contracts, endorsements. If there's room for all of them, there ought to be room for one of me. I mean, after all, I'm a great goodwill ambassador for the United States!”

“Well, I kind of split my life into two pieces. One was where my chess career lies. There, I kept my sanity, so to speak, and my logic. And the other was my religious life. I tried to apply what I learned in the church to my chess career too. But I still was studying chess. I wasn't just "trusting in God" to give me the moves.”

“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. So if you just brought them back from the dead they wouldn’t do well. They’d get bad openings. You cannot compare the playing strength, you can only talk about natural ability. Memorization is enormously powerful. Some kid of fourteen today, or even younger, could get an opening advantage against Capablanca, and especially against the players of the previous century, like Morphy and Steinitz. Maybe they would still be able to outplay the young kid of today. Or maybe not, because nowadays when you get the opening advantage not only do you get the opening advantage, you know how to play, they have so many examples of what to do from this position. It is really deadly, and that is why I don’t like chess any more.”

“Kasparov is a gangster, he is a disgrace to chess, he is a disgrace to the human race. He is not something Russia should be proud of. He should join Khodorkovsky in prison. He has committed a terrible fraud with all these prearranged games and matches.”

“Love cures people - both the ones who give it and the ones who receive it.”

“I love you the more in that I believe you had liked me for my own sake and for nothing else.”

“Love is wholeness, with no searching.”

“Everything is beautiful if you love it.”

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person. ”

“One word
Frees us of all the weight and pain of life:
That word is love.”

“The more you are motivated by love, the more fearless and free your actions will be.”

“The most powerful weapon on earth is the human soul on fire.”

“If you find someone you love in your life, then hang on to that love.”

“A successful marriage requires falling in love many times, always with the same person.”

“Because I loved myself, I was loved.”

“The inner reality of love can be recognized only by love.”