When I won the World Championship in '72, the United States had an image of, you know, a football country, baseball country, but nobody thought of it as an intellectual country.

Yeah, I used to dress badly until I was about sixteen. But people just didn't seem to have enough respect for me, you know And I didn't like that, so I decided I'd have to show them they weren't any better than me, you know? They were sort of priding themselves. They would say, 'He beat us at chess, but he's still just an uncouth kid.' So I decided to dress up.

Vacations are designed to refresh the outlook of everyone. No matter how tired they may be when they return to work, vacationers have been refreshed emotionally and intellectually. Their effectiveness in their job has probably improved, and they are, generally speaking, better employees for the time off.

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.

People have been playing against me below their strength for fifteen years.

When I was eleven, I just got good.

I'd like to travel around, be an international playboy. They have all that money; they could really do it right. Look at (Errol) Flynn.