The World Played Chess Quotes

“Every minute of every day is a gift, and growing old a privilege, not a right.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Regret is so much harder to live with than failure,”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Never get in a fight if your heart isn't in it. You'll lose. Especially if the other guy has something to fight for.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“The world, it seemed, had been busy playing chess, While I had played checkers . . . and ignored the rest.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Never take anything that doesn’t belong to you or that you haven’t earned,” he said, sliding into the car. “You never know who you’re stealing from, and what that money means to them.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“The world played chess, while I played checkers.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Sometimes we know so little, we are not even playing the same game everyone else is playing.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“learn just one thing from his death, if you learn that life is fragile at any age, and that every day is a gift. His death won’t be for nothing if you learn to celebrate each morning that you wake, take a breath, and realize you’re still alive and the day is filled with endless potential.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Dying is hardest on the living.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Growing old is a privilege, not a right,”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Someone once said that failure is easier to live with than regret, and it pierced my heart like an arrow.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“no situation is hopeless unless we let it be.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“I know, firsthand, there has to be a God to make something so beautiful as you and your sister, to give me and your mother such incredibly precious gifts.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Never take anything that doesn’t belong to you or that you haven’t earned,”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“realize now that kids don’t want much, just to know they are loved.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“He told me he felt guilty to have lived, to have made it home when so many did not.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“I am like the pencil I constantly sharpen with a knife; I am just a dull nub of the person I was.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“his corporal, Victor Cruz, advised him not to make friends in Vietnam, that it was easier that way when those soldiers were killed.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“We die and everything goes on, the same as before.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Because William taught me that you can’t expect to be treated as a man if you act like a child, and that every life is precious and can be lost in an instant of stupidity or bad luck. He taught me not to waste the opportunities I had, because so many young men never had a chance at them, never had the chance to grow old.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Every minute of every day is a gift”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“in the midst of all that craziness, crazy is the only reality you know.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Sometimes we know so little, we are not even playing the same game everyone else is playing. Chess is complex and strategic and requires that we think several moves ahead of our opponent. We need to map out our future and be prepared to make unexpected deviations when necessary. In 1979, I was still deciding whether to jump the checker in front of me and get crowned.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“no situation is hopeless unless we let it”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“figured I’d pissed him off. But I didn’t care. Someone needed to ask him if he was okay.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“But Chris will not have died for nothing if you learn just one thing from his death, if you learn that life is fragile at any age, and that every day is a gift. His death won’t be for nothing if you learn to celebrate each morning that you wake, take a breath, and realize you’re still alive and the day is filled with endless potential.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Every time someone so young dies, Beau, like Chris, it’s a shock because it’s not just a loss of life, it’s a loss of potential—what that life could have been. The death of someone so young shatters the illusion we all have at eighteen—the illusion that we’re immortal, that we’re never going to grow old, that we’re never going to die.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Cruz walked over to me. I lowered the camera. He said, “Growing old is a privilege, not a right, Shutter. You learn that quickly here in Nam, and the sooner the better. What happened today is over. You’re here. You still got a job to do. Comprende?” “Comprende.” “Take photographs. Do your job.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“Sometimes bad luck is really dumb actions or inaction. You can make your own luck by making smart decisions”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess

“It was just time for Beau to go. And it was time for Elizabeth and me to let him go. Time to let him live through his own experiences and grow up. It was time to let him find the man he would become, the type of man he wanted to be, the type of person he wanted to be. I realized no one was better suited to choose what was best for Beau than Beau. And I took some pride in that.”
― Robert Dugoni, The World Played Chess