Maurice Ashley quotes:

His tenacity is unmatched in my opinion. Incredible how someone could have suffered that long and come back out of prison with such a good heart and positive things to say and do.

I let my game do the talking. I've had incidents like that but when I compare my own story to the stories that have happened forty or fifty years ago particularly to Jackie Robinson for example.

I see myself more as an ambassador of the game. And I hope to bring chess to a higher level in the United States. Making bigger tournaments, more interesting events. Making it a respectable profession for young people to be able to pursue in the future.

I think that by and large chess players have been very kind. Like I said there have been a few incidents, but they certainly didn't serve to bring me down any.

He actually came up to me and we started speaking. And from that conversation we were able to come to a meeting of the minds and it seemed as if it was clear to me that he wanted to do similar things to what I wanted to do.

Look at Garry Kasparov. After he loses, invariably he wins the next game. He just kills the next guy. That's something that we have to learn to be able to do

Well, I'm still looking for Maurice Ashley. My essential qualities. I think that more than anything, I try to do the right thing, I think about doing the right thing.

I don't like getting hit for one, although you know I did take Aikido for many years, but Aikido is a different kind of martial art, maybe even a more cerebral art because it's all about redirecting the energies of your opponent instead of trying to bash your opponent's head in effectively, so it's a much more loving art, so I guess I tend that way normally anyway.

I love to win. I'm very competitive in most games, but I think also the beauty of the game. There was something about it, the pieces, the shapes, something about them coordinating together and trying to get the other guy.

I think most people are fascinated by chess for that reason. It's just these mystical shapes. It's almost like Harry Potteresque, like wizard's chess in a way. The pieces come alive and you're the sorcerer. You're the magician and you get to do what you want with them and hopefully you don't screw it up.

My brother played the game with his friends, so I thought I was a pretty smart kid and I played this friend of mine and he just crushed me and this was Brooklyn Tech High School in Brooklyn where I still live, in Brooklyn, New York and this guy beat me so bad it wasn't even funny. I couldn't understand why he beat me.

Well I just so happened to bump into a chess book in the library at school and I didn't know that there were books on chess and so I take this book out and I'm like this is going to be cool, I'm going to whoop on this guy now, so I studied the book and I go back and the guy crushes me again.

There's so many lessons I get from chess, it's incredible, but I think the biggest thing for me has always been is that losing is learning.