I now have Croatian citizenship, but I only accepted it because Croatia allowed me to keep my Russian passport.

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.

One should never use exclamation points in writing. It is like laughing at your own joke.

I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading.

If you expect great things of yourself and demand little of others, you’ll keep resentment far away.

Mom in the night The time will come Forests will be regrown People will be reborn When that happens Time will be remembered in history Because we won't count time anymore

Character is the tree, reputation is the shadow.

The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one's own intimate sensitivity.

It's clear that science and science fiction have overlapping populations.

I was in 20 Shakespearean plays by the time I was 20.

All of us write wish fulfillment.

Man struggles to survive, not to succumb