The loss of my childhood was the price for becoming the youngest world champion in history. When you have to fight every day from a young age, your soul can be contaminated. I lost my childhood. I never really had it. Today I have to be careful not to become cruel, because I became a soldier too early.

Without a goal [maneuvering is] aimless. You might be a master tactician, but you'll have no sense of strategy.

I want to serve chess through games, books that are works of art. I would like to bring the game closer to many people all over the world.

One does not succeed by sticking to convention. When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized.

Ultimately, what separates a winner from a loser at the grandmaster level is the willingness to do the unthinkable. A brilliant strategy is, certainly, a matter of intelligence, but intelligence without audaciousness is not enough. Given the opportunity, I must have the guts to explode the game, to upend my opponent's thinking and, in so doing, unnerve him. So it is in business: One does not succeed by sticking to convention. When your opponent can easily anticipate every move you make, your strategy deteriorates and becomes commoditized.

It is quite clear, however, that there won't be any real changes with the current clan structure having seized power in the course of the Karabakh conflict.

Vladimir Putin likes Donald Trump because he supports this view of the world, that the big guys can carve it up, sit and talk about the world, carve up the countries, shape borders. For Putin, treaties, alliances, Nato, the EU are stumbling blocks.