I am not, and never was, and never could have been, a brutal scoundrel.

I am sufficiently proud of my knowing something to be modest about my not knowing all.

Life is a message scribbled in the dark.

I grew, a happy, healthy child in a bright world of illustrated books, clean sand, orange trees, friendly dogs, sea vistas and smiling faces.

The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible.

And really, the reason we think of death in celestial terms is that the visible firmament, especially at night (above our blacked-out Paris with the gaunt arches of its Boulevard Exelmans and the ceaseless Alpine gurgle of desolate latrines), is the most adequate and ever-present symbol of that vast silent explosion.

Of all my Russian books, the defense contains and diffuses the greatest 'warmth' which may seem odd seeing how supremely abstract Chess is supposed to be