This one hour allows me to put the problem into the background and then, when I come back, I am much more rational and less emotional about the particular problem and I can think better about it.
G. Borg 2016
Now, at 51, in my life I have reach the stage between the middlegame and the endgame. But I don’t have the feeling that I am in the endgame already.
Boris Spassky 1988 NIC
According to my experiences, in key events, normally the games’ quality is not as high as other major events. Most brilliant games are not found in championships at present.
Garry Kasparov 2014
Chess should not become an obsession. Otherwise there’s a danger that you will slide off into a parallel world, that you lose your sense of reality, get lost in the infinite cosmos of the game. You become crazy.
Magnus Carlsen 2010
” (about Lasker) For me, this personality, notwithstanding his fundamentally optimistic attitude, had a tragic note. The enormous mental resilience, without which no chess player can exist, was so much taken up by chess that he could never free his mind of this game, even when he was occupied by philosophical and humanitarian questions.”
Albert Einstein