George Steiner

"A chess genius is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise. "

"Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and archive mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement, against that past. "

"It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. "

"The journalistic vision sharpens to the point of maximum impact every event, every individual and social configuration but the honing is uniform. "