Radio Interview, July 6 2001 http://www.geocities.jp/bobbby_b/mp3/F_18_1.MP3
2000s
“Chess may be the deepest, least exhaustible of pastimes, but it is nothing more. As for a chess genius, he is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.”
Fields of Force (1974)
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George Steiner 74
American writer 1929–2020Related quotes
“The public must come to see that chess is a violent sport. Chess is mental torture.”
As quoted in Martin Amis's review of "Kasparov-Short" by Raymond Keene, Independent on Sunday, November 1995.
1990s
“I achieved more than I could dream of in chess and in chess composing.”
From an interview with Tibor Károlyi, Genius in the Background (2009), p. 59.
“Chess is as elaborate a waste of human intelligence as you can find outside an advertising agency.”
Andrew Soltis (in Golombek's Encyclopedia of Chess, New York, 1977)
About
“You know, even more than playing chess, I dislike dealing with self-righteous chess players.”
Source: Michaelmas (1977), Chapter 7 (p. 98)
“I'm a chess player; I play chess.”
2010s, 2015, Interview with Jim Gray (September 2015)