The ordinary man casts a shadow in a way we do not quite understand. The man of genius casts light.

[The] most important tribute any human being can pay to a poem or a piece of prose he or she really loves is to learn it by heart. Not by brain, by heart; the expression is vital.

Chess may be the deepest, least exhaustible of pastimes, but it is nothing more. As for a chess genius, he is a human being who focuses vast, little-understood mental gifts and labors on an ultimately trivial human enterprise.

No man sees his shadow who faces the sun

We know that a man can read Goethe or Rilke in the evening, that he can play Bach and Schubert, and go to his day's work at Auschwitz in the morning.

Man is no star, but a quick coal

Of mortal fire:
Who blows it not, nor doth control

A faint desire,