Chessmen Quotes

“I didn't mind what she called me, what anybody called me. But this was the room I had to live in. It was all I had in the way of a home. In it was everything that was mine, that had any association for me, any past, anything that took the place of a family. Not much: a few books, pictures, radio, chessmen, old letters, stuff like that. Nothing. Such as they were, they had all my memories.”
― Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

“Divided - No tides of time or distance will wash away your step. It does not fleet as they do, those gladiators and their mighty spears or the beasts that howl into the dark for release.
Our story carves deeper, pitilessly, infinitely. A wound that bleeds the ink that stained your palm and the tears of an impossible tomorrow.”
― RJ Arkhipov

“We hardly said anything, we seemed to communicate through the chessmen, there was something very symbolic about my winning. That he wished me to feel. I don’t know what it was. I don’t know whether it was that he wanted me to see my “virtue” triumphed over his “vice” or something subtler, that sometimes losing is winning.”
― John Fowles, The Collector

“The Offing - And if the sky itself, no matter its hue, were to fracture... What then? Would I then know freedom's name?

In my wake lies the shore—a past where I had been happy—refusing to yield to the tide. Before me, upon the horizon, is the sun... hesitant... inert... A new day cannot rise if its ancestor does not fall. Am I but a pawn in this game? I cannot command the sun to set, nor will the moon to take its place and wash the shore away. That power belongs to kings.

To drown in the offing.
Such sovereign beauty. Such exquisite pain.”
― RJ Arkhipov

“What Will Linger/Hollow of Him - They crept so quietly back. Mere hints of words, at first, then whispers in the loud echoing a winter past. In this place, hollow of Him, his poetry resounded. I could almost taste the fragments of the worlds he had discovered. I remember the ache in his words; you could see each syllable smoulder in his gaze.”
― RJ Arkhipov

“Era un giorno d'autunno dal colore bluastro, in compagnia di Boris Spasskij. Stavano analizzando la partita appena giocata e Miša muoveva i pezzi avanti e indietro soltanto per cercare di sacrificarli: a ogni variante proposta da Boris replicava immolando un pedone o un cavallo, per scoprire puntualmente che le combinazioni non funzionavano, la catena di mosse si spezzava in qualche anello. Eppure una via doveva esserci; doveva pur esistere il modo di presentare una nuova offerta all'altare.
Si accaniva con foga, incapace di arrendersi all'evidenza, e l'amico a un certo punto gli diceva: "Senti, lo sai che non funziona cosi, vero? Che non e' possibile trovare sempre un sacrificio ?".
"Si, si, lo so", rispondeva Miša sbuffando. E poi una risata: "Ma vorrei tantissimo che lo fosse! ".”
― Giorgio Fontana, Il Mago di Riga

“Botvinnik affermava sempre, e con orgoglio, di non giocare mai per puro piacere. Miša restava senza parole: il piacere era la ragione principale per cui lui giocava.”
― Giorgio Fontana, Il Mago di Riga

“In ogni paese, a ogni torneo, individui di qualsiasi nazionalità ed etnia uniti dalla medesima ossessione. Gens una sumus: cosi il motto della Federazione internazionale degli scacchi. Siamo una sola famiglia di persone inebriate dal rumore dei pezzi sul legno -- tac! toc! e pronte a ritrovarci qui nonostante le barriere, i muri, l'atomica, tutto quel che fino a un attimo fa sembrava separarci per sempre, e tutto quel che un domani inventeremo per separaci ancora.”
― Giorgio Fontana, Il Mago di Riga