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.

Putin recognized that if he could get enough money, everything would be under control.

To my surprise I found that when other top players in the precomputer age (before 1995, roughly) wrote about games in magazines and newspaper columns, they often made more mistakes in their annotations than the players had made at the board.

Barack Obama took over after Vladimir Putin's first aggression, in Georgia. In 2009, he did the reset policy because they had these stupid ideas about former president Dmitry Medvedev. They thought he would be the leader, not Putin. Everyone played this game with Medvedev as their bet, Berlin, Paris, London, the idea of smoothly transferring to something more acceptable. It was always a charade, a Putin project to solidify his power and come back after four years of nominal occupation of the office by Medvedev.

The legend of the best player of chess has been destroyed.

There is no doubt that [Vladimir] Putin is responsible for this crime, whether or not he gave the order to commit the murder [of Boris Nemtsov] himself. Putin created the conditions and atmosphere that have made this kind of thing possible.

My mother lives in Moscow, and I would like to visit her. Now she always has to travel to Finland or a Baltic country to meet me. But I have to expect that my papers would be confiscated in Moscow immediately, and that they would harass my family. I can still have more impact in the West with my books and lectures.