I see my own style as being a symbiosis of the styles of Alekhine, Tal and Fischer.

I've met enough KGB colonels in my life.

If you wish to succeed, you must brave the risk of failure.

A grandmaster needs to retain thousands of games in his head, for games are to him what the words of their mother tongue are to ordinary people, or notes or scores to musicians.

It was not about losing my mental power; it's about not feeling good about my contribution to the game.

I think Russians today have a distorted picture of capitalism, liberal democracy and market economy.

Losing can persuade you to change what doesn't need to be changed, and winning can convince you everything is fine even if you are on the brink of disaster.

At the end of the day, it's all about money.

Excelling at chess has long been considered a symbol of more general intelligence. That is an incorrect assumption in my view, as pleasant as it might be.

Chess helps you to concentrate, improve your logic. It teaches you to play by the rules and take responsibility for your actions, how to problem solve in an uncertain environment.

When I was preparing for one term's work in the Botvinnik school I had to spend a lot of time on king and pawn endings. So when I came to a tricky position in my own games I knew the winning method.

If all the arts aspire to the condition of music all the sciences aspire to the condition of mathematics.

I worked for MI6 in the Sixties, during the great witch-hunts, when the shared paranoia of the Cold War gripped the services.

I'm sorry, I don't talk to the press. Even though I think you're cute.

Everything, everything in war is barbaric... But the worst barbarity of war is that it forces men collectively to commit acts against which individually they would revolt with their whole being.

Have taken Trier with two divisions. What do you want me to do? Give it back?

Kafka wrote the great line: "my education has damaged me in ways I do not even know." And that's always been a signature motto for me.

The essence of temptation is the invitation to live independently of God.

I think the world is going to be saved by millions of small things.

You know, as you compose music, you're just off in your own world. You have no idea where reality is, so to have an idea of what people think is pretty hard.

The more attention you give to the paparazzi, the more it just, like, validates everything . . .