If they had told me it was going to be fifteen years, would it have been easier to endure?

Nietzsche’s ideas seem exeptionally well suited for the chess game, but he was describing the world. Chess has stood the test of Nietzschean thinking.

How can you really care about us if you don’t care for yourself?

I do not think there is any other mental strain comparable to the exertion to which a tournament game subjects the chess master. Working at what seemed to me the most difficult mathematical problems has never exhausted me nearly as much as playing in a chess tournament; and of all intellectual applications mathematical work is surely the hardest. That is why physical fitness is a most important factor in tournament chess and why young players, whose brains can stand the poisons of fatigue much longer than those of older players have a great advantage.

Voetballen is simpel, maar het moeilijkste wat er is, is simpel voetballen.