Living is more a question of what one spends than what one makes.

The life of a chess master is much more difficult than that of an artist - much more depressing. An artist knows that someday there'll be recognition and monetary reward, but for the chess master there is little public recognition and absolutely no hope of supporting himself by his endeavors. If Bobby Fischer came to me for advice, I certainly would not discourage him - as if anyone could - but I would try to make it positively clear that he will never have any money from chess, live a monk-like existence and know more rejection than any artist ever has, struggling to be known and accepted.

Chess is a sport. A violent sport.

The Chess pieces are the block alphabet which shapes thoughts; and these thoughts, although making a visual design on the chessboard, express their beauty abstractly, like a poem

I am interested in ideas, not merely in visual products.

Art has the lovely habit of ruining all artistic theories.

I'm not at all sure that the concept of the readymade isn't the most important single idea to come out of my work.