Some people think that if their opponent plays a beautiful game, it's OK to lose. I don't. You have to be merciless.

Not winning a tournament is not an option for me, unless it's no longer theoretically possible - then of course winning becomes impossible. But up to that point, not winning is just not an option.

You can feel the same thing in football or soccer - that for the best teams in Spain and England, for instance, the public... they're not really going to cheer at all when they play against bad teams unless they do something spectacular. Even if they're winning by a few goals they'll probably just say, "nah." That's normal and they're not excited about it.

Maybe if I didn't have the talent in chess I'd find the talent in something else. The only thing I know is that I have talent in chess, and I'm satisfied with that.

I honestly don't read that much. Obviously I read chess books - in terms of favorites, Kasparov's 'My Great Predecessors' is pretty good.

Without the element of enjoyment, it is not worth trying to excel at anything.

I don't consider myself a particularly young chess player. I have been playing in the best tournaments in the world since I was 16 years old. In other sports, if you have been playing for seven years, you are not a young prodigy any more. You're one of the pros.