Quotes from Frank Brady

Regardless of Bobby's recent hate-filled rantings, which I abhor, he is nonetheless one of the greatest chessplayers of all time.

Practice isn't the thing you do once you're good. It's the thing you do that makes you good.

It's not a question of money. After you reach a certain point, money becomes unimportant. What matters is success. The sensible thing would be for me to stop now. But I can't. I have to keep aiming higher and higher just for the thrill.

Perhaps the most important role for a second is analyzing adjourned positions jointly with the player. Sometimes this means all-night sessions, so that the player has a variety of tactics to employ when play is resumed the next day. Soviet players were traditionally serviced by a team of seconds, each performing an assigned task. For example, there could be an endgame specialist, an opening theoretician, a physical trainer, a "go-for," and sometimes a psychologist.

Orson arrived at the school lugging his makeup box, and once after a bully had attacked him, Orson repaired to the school washroom where he applied makeup so his face would resemble a bloody pulp. The bully screamed and fled. After that he left Orson alone.

A fair estimate is that Bobby played one thousand games a year between the ages of nine and eleven, and twelve thousand a year from the ages of eleven to thirteen, most of them speed games.

Bobby announced that he'd never again participate in a Candidates tournament, because the FIDE system made it impossible for any but a Soviet player to win.

two enormous bedrooms of the Ariston and the private

After about a year, though, he concluded that the amount of time he was spending practicing the accordion was impinging on his chess studies. "I did fairly well on it for a while," Bobby said, looking back, "but chess had more attraction and the accordion was pushed aside.

A cynic once said that the most difficult part of success is finding someone who is happy for you.

Soviet Chess Federation had four million members, and playing chess wasn't just required in elementary schools but compulsory in after-school activities;

Indeed, some of the Icelandic officials were convinced that Spassky was the better player and that he was going to defeat Fischer rather easily anyway. At the commencement of the match, they were privately expecting to see Fischer humiliated on the board.