I think Russian people are learning that democracy is not an alien thing; it's not a western invention.

Nervous energy is the ammunition we take into any mental battle. If you don't have enough of it, your concentration will fade. If you have a surplus, the results will explode.

Ultimately, what separates a Winner from a Loser at the Grandmaster level is the Willingness to do the Unthinkable.

For young players, their minds are not overloaded. I am 54 with four kids and I do many other things. Even if I stopped everything else, spent months working just on chess, for a long match against most of the top players, a classical match, six hours, say, I don't stand a chance. I have a better chance in shorter matches. Rapid is 25 minutes, or blitz events where you have five minutes to make a move, or bullet games, where it is one minute. For blitz, five-minutes chess, I would be top ten, top five. But longer games, no chance.

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

From Ukraine to Syria, he [Vladimir Putin] is behaving like the world's new general and celebrating victories, while the American president sits on the sidelines and Europe sleeps. The West's behavior toward Putin is political and moral capitulation.

You're always going to have dangerous, disaffected people in any society, and some will be violent. Increasing prosperity and reducing inequality won't solve that completely. But having big, positive dreams and a society that makes it possible to achieve those dreams is what we must strive for.