Walter Tevis > Quotes

“I feel free and strong. If I were not a reader of books I could not feel this way.”
― Walter Tevis

“I feel free and strong. If I were not a reader of books I could not feel this way. Whatever may happen to me, thank God that I can read, that I have truly touched the minds of other men.”
― Walter Tevis, Mockingbird

“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.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“She was alone, and she liked it. It was the way she had learned everything important in her life.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“The strongest person is the person who isn’t scared to be alone.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“Chess isn't always competitive. Chess can also be beautiful.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“She had flirted with alcohol for years. Now it was time to consummate the relationship.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“Only the mockingbird sings at the edge of the woods.”
― Walter Tevis

“It is foolish to run risk of going mad for vanity's sake.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“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.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“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.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“Reading is too intimate,' Spofforth said. 'It will put you too close to the feelings and ideas of others. It will disturb and confuse you.”
― Walter Tevis, Mockingbird

“The strange thing about television is that it doesn't tell you everything.”
― Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell to Earth

“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.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“Her mind was luminous, and her soul sang to her in the sweet moves of chess.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“Reading is the subtle and thorough sharing of the ideas and feelings by underhanded means. It is a gross invasion of Privacy and a direct violation of the Constitutions of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Age. The Teaching of Reading is equally a crime against Privacy and Personhood. One to five years on each count.”
― Walter Tevis, Mockingbird

“I could have done this at eight.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“After a moment a simple thought came to her: I’m not playing Benny Watts; I’m playing chess.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“When literacy died, so had history.”
― Walter Tevis, Mockingbird

“Beth walked slowly home and replayed the game. Her mind was as lucid as a perfect, stunning diamond”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“Not all of us are insane.’ ‘But most of you are. Enough of you are – it only requires a few insane ones, in the right places.”
― Walter Tevis, The man who fell to Earth

“My tranquility needs to be refurbished,”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“There had been a few times over the past year when she felt like this, with her mind not only dizzied but nearly terrified by the endlessness of chess.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“What you know is not always important.”
― Walter Tevis , The Queen's Gambit

“Benny, I like the way your hair looks.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“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”.”
― Walter Tevis, The Queen's Gambit

“Do you realize that you will not only wreck your civilization, such as it is, and kill most of your people; but that you will also poison the fish in your rivers, the squirrels in your trees, the flocks of birds, the soil, the water? There are times when you seem, to us, like apes loose in a museum, carrying knives, slashing the canvases, breaking the statuary with hammers.”
― Walter Tevis, The Man Who Fell to Earth

“I am human. I talk and I listen and I read.”
― Walter Tevis, Mockingbird

“It all began, I suppose, with learning to build fires—to warm the cave and keep the predators out. And it ended with time-release Valium.”
― Walter Tevis, Mockingbird

“You drop that load too when you find yourself an excuse. Then, afterward, all you got to do is learn to feel sorry for yourself—and lots of people learn to get their kicks that way. It’s one of the best indoor sports, feeling sorry.” Bert’s face broke into an active grin. “A sport enjoyed by all. Especially the born losers.”
― Walter Tevis, The Hustler