I was very lucky that while I was a chess player in a country where chess was not a big deal, I happened to be in the one city where there was a sprouting chess team: Chennai.

India has lot of talent. What I am happy with is that the talent keeps on coming. Certainly it could be nice, though I am not terribly keen on seeing my successor yet.

When I started out playing chess as a kid I thought I should be world champion. As a kid you have no idea what that means and you only sort of picture it. It is hard to imagine that I waited all those years and it happened in a late stage of my career.

Confidence is very important - even pretending to be confident. If you make a mistake but do not let your opponent see what you are thinking then he may overlook the mistake.

In chess, knowledge is a very transient thing. It changes so fast that even a single mouse-slip sometimes changes the evaluation.

I would never suggest to anyone that they drop school for chess. First of all even if you can make it in chess, your social skills need to be developed there.

For every door the computers have closed they have opened a new one.