Chess is not dominoes

I've met enough KGB colonels in my life.

If you wish to succeed, you must brave the risk of failure.

A grandmaster needs to retain thousands of games in his head, for games are to him what the words of their mother tongue are to ordinary people, or notes or scores to musicians.

It was not about losing my mental power; it's about not feeling good about my contribution to the game.

I think Russians today have a distorted picture of capitalism, liberal democracy and market economy.

Losing can persuade you to change what doesn't need to be changed, and winning can convince you everything is fine even if you are on the brink of disaster.

At the end of the day, it's all about money.

Excelling at chess has long been considered a symbol of more general intelligence. That is an incorrect assumption in my view, as pleasant as it might be.

Chess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules and take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment.

When I was preparing for one term's work in the Botvinnik school I had to spend a lot of time on king and pawn endings. So when I came to a tricky position in my own games I knew the winning method.

If you cannot be a poet, be the poem.

Each day hands me a clean sheet of paper upon which to write. Therefore, I would be wise to write without ever having the need to erase.

Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence.

Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women.

Six days shalt thou paddle and pack, but on the seventh thou shall wash thy socks.

I'm in love with a philosophy major, and she doesn't even know I exist. And what's worse, she can prove it.

Meat eating and a compassionate religion do not go hand in hand.

Life has a balance and natural order. I'm not fighting the flow anymore. My career right now is very up. It's happening naturally and it's happening well.

The only limit to your garden is at the boundaries of your imagination.

Everything that I talk about, pretty much, are things that I learned or understood over the years.