It is rarely a mysterious technique that drives us to the top, but rather a profound mastery of what may well be a basic skill set.

In chess you might find a good move. Then you might find a better move. But take your time. Find the best move.

A man wants to walk across the land, but the earth is covered with thorns. He has two options - one is to pave his road, to tame all of nature into compliance. The other is to make sandals. Making sandals is the internal solution...it does not base success on a submissive world or overpowering force, but on intelligent preparation and cultivated resilience.

My coach and my parents both had this relationship to what I was doing, which was allowing me to express myself with chess. And so I could love it. I had a passion for it. I was expressing myself through chess, and I was learning about myself through chess.

The key to pursuing excellence is to embrace an organic, long-term learning process, and not to live in a shell of static, safe mediocrity. Usually, growth comes at the expense of previous comfort or safety.

In America, people focus on the end result; they focus on the star.

Initially I was very drawn to the Tao Te Ching, the Taoist philosophy. It was helping me deal with the balance of these external and internal issues with my chess life. Tai chi is the martial embodiment of Taoist philosophy. Initially, I had no intention of competing in the martial arts; it was just the meditation.