“One cannot play chess if one becomes aware of the pieces as living souls and of the fact that the Whites and the Blacks have more in common with each other than with the players. Suddenly one loses all interest in who will be champion.”

“Chess is not Mathematics, where ten is always more than one; in chess the King with a pawn can beat opponent's King with all pieces if they are placed badly.”

“You know, even more than playing chess, I dislike dealing with self-righteous chess players.”

“No one loses any other life than the one he now lives, nor does one live any other life than that which he will lose.”

“Many have become Chess Masters, no one has become the Master of Chess.”

“All this twaddle, the existence of God, atheism, determinism, liberation, societies, death, etc., are pieces of a chess game called language, and they are amusing only if one does not preoccupy oneself with 'winning or losing this game of chess.”

“The chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chess-board, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem... I have come to the personal conclusion that while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.”

“I'm a chess player; I play chess.”

“Looking back, I guess I used to play-act all the time. For one thing, it meant I could live in a more interesting world than the one around me.”

“To become a world chess champion.”