Bobby Fischer

There isn't a woman player in the world I can't give knights-odds to and still beat.

She and I just don't see eye to eye together. She's a square. She keeps telling me that I'm too interested in chess, that I should get friends outside of chess, you can't make a living from chess, that I should finish high school and all that nonsense. She keeps in my hair and I don't like people in my hair, you know, so I had to get rid of her.

Capablanca was among the greatest of chess players, but not because of his endgame. His trick was to keep his openings simple, and then play with such brilliance in the middlegame that the game was decided - even though his ooponent didn't always know it - before they arrived at the ending.

I give 98 percent of my mental energy to Chess Others give only 2 percent

I felt that chess... is a science in the form of a game... I consider myself a scientist. I wanted to be treated like a scientist.

You have to have the fighting spirit. You have to force moves and take chances

My opponents make good moves too. Sometimes I don't take these things into consideration

There's no one alive I can't beat.

But the thing that was great about Capablanca was that he really spoke his mind, he said what he believed was true, he said what he felt. He [Capablanca] wanted to change the rules [of chess] already, back in the twenties, because he said chess was getting played out. He was right. Now chess is completely dead. It is all just memorisation and prearrangement. It's a terrible game now. Very uncreative.

People have been playing against me below their strength for fifteen years.

Chess and me, it's hard to take them apart. It's like my alter ego.

For the first lesson, I want you to play over every column of Modern Chess Openings, including the footnotes. And for the next lesson, I want you to do it again.

As Olafsson showed me, White can win... It's hard to believe. I stayed up all night analysing, finally convicing myself, and, incidentally, learning a lot about Rook and Pawn endings in the process.

I don't like to dwell on the past. I'm interested in Fischerandom now, I am working on a new clock, I'm trying to make chess a more exciting game today. I am not interested in sitting in my rocking chair thinking what I did 10, 20 or 30 years ago.

If you don't win, it's not a great tragedy - the worst that happens is that you lose a game.

All that matters on the Chessboard is good moves.

Your body has to be in top condition. Your Chess deteriorates as your body does. You can't separate body from mind