“All that matters on the chessboard is good moves.”

“I looked down at the chessboard. The move with the knight was wrong. I put it back where I had moved it from. Knights had no meaning in this game. It wasn't a game for knights.”

“I study the chessboard and concede defeat."You can gain yourself in five moves" says the Colonel. "Worth fighting to the end. In five moves your opponent can err. No war is won or lost until the final battle is over.”

“Like looking down on a lubricious chess set, isn't it? The king moves in tiny steps, with no direction, like a drunkard trying to avoid the archer's bolt. The others work their strategies and wait for the old man to fall. He has no power, yet all power moves in his orbit and to his mad whim. Do you know there's no fool piece on the chessboard, Kent?" "Methinks the fool is the player, the mind above the moves.”

“It suddenly occurred to me that every move on the chessboard is old and has been played by somebody at some time. Maybe our own history has been played out by somebody at some time, and we just move our pieces about in the same moves to strike in the same way as people have always done.”

“The good man is the man who, no matter how morally unworthy he has been, is moving to become better.”