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1 " Peter Piper picked up a peck of pickled peppers. "
― Walter Tevis , The Queen's Gambit
2 " It's an entire world of just 64 squares. I feel safe in it. I can control it; I can dominate it. And it's predictable. So, if I get hurt, I only have myself to blame. "
3 " Chess isn't always competitive. Chess can also be beautiful. "
4 " I am no longer a wife, except by legal fiction. "
5 " How old were you when you started playing?”, she asked.“Five. I was District Champion at seven. I hope to be a World Champion one day.”“When?”“In three years.”“You'll be sixteen in three years”, she said, “If you win, what will you do afterward?”.He looked confused. “I don't understand”, he replied.“If you're a World Champion at sixteen, what will you do with the rest of your life?”He still looked confused. “I don't understand”. "
6 " Set it up and think it out.”“I don't have to set it up to think it out. "
7 " Don't you get bored sometimes?”, she asked.“What else is there?”, Benny replied. "
8 " Chess certainly isn't all there is”, Mrs. Wheatley continued.“It's what I know”, replied Beth. "
9 " She had heard of the genetic code that could shape an eye or hand from passing proteins. Deoxyribonucleic acid. It contained the entire set of instructions for constructing a respiratory system and a digestive one, as well as the grip of an infant's hand. Chess was like that. The geometry of a position could be read and reread and not exhausted of possibility. You saw deeply into the layer of it, but there was another layer beyond that, and another, and another. "
10 " What you know is not always important. "
11 " What I wanted to tell you about Philidor was that Diderot wrote him a letter. You know Diderot?""The French Revolution?""Yeah. Philidor was doing blindfold exhibitions and burning out his brain, or whatever it was they thought you did in the eighteenth century. Diderot wrote him: 'It is foolish to run the risk of going mad for vanity's sake.' I think of that sometimes when I'm analyzing my ass over a chessboard. "
12 " All of them? "
13 " She was alone, and she liked it. It was the way she had learned everything important in her life. "
14 " She had flirted with alcohol for years. Now it was time to consummate the relationship. "
15 " My experience has taught me that what you know isn’t always important.”“What is important?”“Living and growing,” Mrs. Wheatley said with finality. “Living your life. "
16 " The strongest person is the person who isn’t scared to be alone. "
17 " Listening to the two of them, she had felt something unpleasant and familiar: the sense that chess was a thing between men, and she was an outsider. She hated the feeling. "
18 " After a moment a simple thought came to her: I’m not playing Benny Watts; I’m playing chess. "
19 " And what did being women have to do with it? She was better than any male player in America. She remembered the Life interviewer and the questions about her being a woman in a man's world. To hell with her; it wouldn't be a man's world when she finished with it. "
20 " I could have done this at eight. "
