I’ve seen - both in myself and my competitors - how satisfaction can lead to a lack of vigilance, then to mistakes and missed opportunities.

Perfectly correct chess exists only in theory.

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.

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

Our skin, our borders, all seem petty compared to alien races and the scale of galaxies. Nobody in the Star Wars universe cares about white or black humans, it seems, and what meaning could physical appearance possibly have when there are sentient beings that look like lobsters or like Jabba the Hutt? Unfortunately, in the real world, such hopeful sentiments are regularly refuted by our stubborn insistence on always finding someone to discriminate against.

I'm not paranoid, but I am cautious. I don't drink tea with strangers, I don't fly Aeroflot and I avoid certain countries with close ties to Russia.

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.