Grandmaster Quotes & Sayings

I didn't picture myself as even a grandmaster, to say nothing of aspiring to the chess crown. This was not because I was timid - I wasn't - but because I simply lived in one world, and the grandmasters existed in a completely different one. People like that were not really even people, but like gods or mythical heroes. — Anatoly Karpov

I had Ice Cube on my first album, "Bunker," and then I did a remix for Snoop Dogg. I've worked with Grandmaster Flash and Pharrell. It's a different work process and there's a different take with how you produce [hip-hop]. — Paul Oakenfold

What has happened is that to some degree they have taken an attitude where they don't listen to demos of diverse subject matters. They're looking for demos like the record the guy on the left just did. — Grandmaster Flash

To become a chess grandmaster also seems to take about ten years. (Only the legendary Bobby Fischer got to that elite level in less than that amount of time: it took him nine years.) And what's ten years? Well, it's roughly how long it takes to put in ten thousand hours of hard practice. Ten thousand hours is the magic number of greatness. — Malcolm Gladwell

Hip-hop didn't invent anything ... hip-hop re-invented everything. — Grandmaster Caz

Ultimately, what separates a Winner from a Loser at the Grandmaster level is the Willingness to do the Unthinkable. — Garry Kasparov

When I am performing live, I walk into a room, and I just try to get a feel for the vibe, and I am coming from different angles musically. I might come with a new song, I might come with some hip-hop, with some R&B. Once I find my way, then I am hitting you, and hitting you all night. — Grandmaster Flash

Athletes rejected, governors corrected
Gangsters, thugs and smugglers are thoroughly respected
The money gets divided
The women get excited
Now I'm broke and it's no joke
It's hard as hell to fight it, don't buy it!
— Grandmaster Flash

So what I'm trying to say is from a musical aspect for anybody to say that whatever they're doing in Florida is not Hip Hop or whatever they're doing in LA is not Hip Hop, who are these people to say that? — Grandmaster Flash

There was a sense of being taken on a journey by the grandmaster of the road trip. You feel this weird angel taking you somewhere. You don't know where, but you trust him. — Michelle Williams

Here is a definition which correctly reflects the course of thought and action of a grandmaster: - The plan in a game of chess is the sum total of successive strategical operations which are each carried out according to separate ideas arising from the demands of the position. — Alexander Kotov

As an individual I was known as the DJ or the mixer. — Grandmaster Flash

So to compare the Beatles, obviously the Beatles are the Beatles, but in hip-hop terms, Tribe is the Beatles. Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five are the Beatles. Big Daddy Kane is Jimi Hendrix. It means that much to people that grew up with it. — Michael Rapaport

I prefer to make my annotations 'hot on the heels', as it were, when the fortunes of battle, the worries, hopes and disappointments are still sufficiently fresh in my mind. Much as I would like to, I cannot say this about these few games which will be given below. In fact, if the annotator should begin to use phrases of the type: 'in reply to...I had worked out the following variation...', the reader will rightly say 'Grandmaster, you are showing off', since the 'oldest' of these games is now more than 25 years old, and even the 'newest' more than 20. Therefore, I would ask you not to regard the following 'stylised' annotations too severely. — Mikhail Tal

It's turns out to be much easier to simulate a grandmaster chess player than it is to simulate a 2-year-old. — Alison Gopnik

For instance, if you're playing a record with drums - horns would sound nice to enhance it so you get a record with horns and slip it in at certain times. — Grandmaster Flash

We gotta stop fighting amongst each other. I think the only rift should be when take it the stage and try to out perform each other. — Grandmaster Flash

I think what's happening here is, there's a group or maybe one person who is saying this is gonna be the definition and this is what we want to get the kids to do now. — Grandmaster Flash

Just as the pianist practices the most complicated pieces to improve the technique of his fingers, so too a grandmaster must keep his vision in trim by daily analysis of positions with sharp possibilities, and this applies whether he prefers such positions in his play or not. — Alexander Kotov

I'm not big on snacks, but I if do, I like a few M&M's. — Grandmaster Flash

Conquer your neighbourhood, conquer your city, conquer your country, and then go after the rest of the world. That's my mantra. — Grandmaster Flash

Thanks to the Polgars the adjective 'men's' before events and the 'affirmative action' women's titles such as Woman Grandmaster have become anachronisms. — Garry Kasparov

Normal kids in their teens want to go and date girls and do mischievous things, your hormones are jumping around, but I stayed in my bedroom in search of something. — Grandmaster Flash

A true Grandmaster is a person who starts the arts at a very young age and continues it until their body will no longer allows it. Then they still contribute mentally to the art. — Choi Hong Hi

I needed a way to have the platter continuously spinning while I'm moving the record back and forth. I went to a fabric store. When I touched this hairy stuff - felt - I found it. I rubbed spray starch on both sides and ironed it until it became a stiff wafer. After that, I was able to stop time. — Grandmaster Flash

I had love for Breakout; I had love for Bambaataa. I had love for Kool Herc. — Grandmaster Flash

Can you imagine Grandmaster Flash on a laptop? — Paul Oakenfold

If there is a record I don't have, I haven't heard it yet. My collection is always growing, but I can't really play it anywhere - no promoter is willing to pay for my crates of vinyl to fly with me, so I have a team of people to digitise it all. — Grandmaster Flash

My father was my first inspiration. He had an incredible stereo and a turntable, and I was told not to touch it. But I'd go back and touch it anyway. I gained a respect for the turntables when I was a kid. When I was a teenager, I came up with a 'cueing system' to work the turntables because they didn't have it at that time. — Grandmaster Flash

Grandmaster games are said to begin with novelty, which is the first move of the game that exits the book. It could be the fifth, it could be the thirty-fifth. We think about a chess game as beginning with move one and ending with checkmate. But this is not the case. The games begins when it gets out of book, and it end when it goes into book..And this is why Game 6 [between Garry Kasparov and Deep Blue] didn't count ... Tripping and falling into a well on your way to the field of battle is not the same thing as dying in it ... Deep Blue is only itself out of book; prior to that it is nothing. Just the ghosts of the game itself. — Brian Christian

And he now knew with certainty that the world was hollowed of its wonder by knowledge and travel, that when one stripped away the mysteries, its dimensions collapsed rather than bloomed. Of course, the world was a much more sophisticated place to him now than it had been when he was a child, but it was also far simpler. Everywhere
men grasped and grasped, as though the titles "king," "shriah," and "grandmaster" were simply masks worn by the same hungry animal. Avarice, it seemed to him, was the world's only dimension. — R. Scott Bakker

Look past the garbage, over the trains,
Under the ruins, through the remains,
Around the crime and pollution,
And tell me ... where I fit in? — Grandmaster Caz

Disco B still rolls with me now. He's still doing his thing. He does clubs in different places. He was very instrumental in helping me perfect my craft. — Grandmaster Flash

I don't want to be classified as an old-skool DJ or new-skool DJ. I want to be classified as an all-skool DJ who plays it all. I also want to learn to DJ house music in my own fashion. — Grandmaster Flash

Often you will find the opposite situation. The author seems to have interesting ideas, but he is not able to illustrate them with decent examples. If a grandmaster is commenting on one of his own games, then there is usually not any problem: his general thoughts are closely tied up with what is happening on the board. But as soon as he starts writing an article or book on a different theme the difficulties begin, as he may not have suitable material to hand. — Mark Dvoretsky

By the time a player becomes a Grandmaster, almost all of his training time is dedicated to work on this first phase. The opening is the only phase that holds out the potential for true creativity and doing something entirely new. — Garry Kasparov

I developed the Clock Theory to help me time records; you know, spin the record back two revolutions or whatever and then play the break, spin the other one back two, play, like that. — Grandmaster Flash

Time, the ultimate grandmaster that could never be checkmated. There was no way out of its distended belly. — Rohinton Mistry

My romantically favorite era is 78, 79 listening to Grandmaster Flash and the Furious 4, the live tapes, echo chamber and break beats. — Kool Moe Dee

Jimmy suspected him of wanting to make Grandmaster, not because it meant anything but just because it was there. — Margaret Atwood

It was clear to me that the vulnerable point of the American Grandmaster (Bobby Fischer) was in double-edged, hanging, irrational positions, where he often failed to find a win even in a won position — Efim Geller

I love watching Samuel L. Jackson do anything, but for me, Gary Oldman is the grandmaster of the game. — Joel Kinnaman

I went to junkyards, abandoned car lots. I asked supermarkets for the big jugs they put pig guts in, to make cabinets for my bass speakers. — Grandmaster Flash

I want to go to - what's that hot country with a lot of money? - Dubai. — Grandmaster Flash

A grandmaster needs to retain thousands of games in his head, for games are to him what the words of their mother tongue are to ordinary people, or notes or scores to musicians.. — Garry Kasparov

Television is like speed chess, as you have no time and no money. It is like trying to play Grandmaster chess with a 20 minute timer. The rewards are great, though, as it moves faster and you get to see the finished results much quicker. — Dean Devlin

Do not let any record company disturb your creative flow. You are not writing for the record company. You're writing for the public. — Grandmaster Flash

I knew there was a way to blend records together, but I didn't know how to. This was haunting me when I was in my teens. In my frustration, I decided to start experimenting with electronics. I tested the torque factor on different turntables. I had to figure needles out. See, there are two kinds, elliptical and conical. — Grandmaster Flash

But I had two very special people who helped to take my style to the next level. Thank God for my first MC Cowboy and my first student Grand Wizard Theodore, and to go out after creating this art form and finding everyone jamming to it - that too was pretty scary. — Grandmaster Flash

I had to go into a studio and compose and write and press up 12 songs in 14 hours. When you're recording a song from scratch it takes you 14 hours to do just one song. — Grandmaster Flash

Hmmmm ... It's fun being in front of people, playing shows and all. But hotels? Being away from home? That's different. — Grandmaster Flash

We can come from our own particular point of view and lay it down. We should not be throwing verbal rocks at each other. We're all responsible to continue the growth of Hip Hop. — Grandmaster Flash

When I started producing, I was just making music under all different names. 'Black Afro.' 'Super Grandmaster.' 'Mister Bull.' Like, the most stupid, idiotic names. 'Afrojack' was one of those idiotic names. — Afrojack

On traditional economic theory:
We do not play chess as if we were a grandmaster, invest as if we were Warren Buffett, or cook like an Iron Chef. It is more likely we cook like Warren Buffett, who loves to eat at Dairy Queen. — Richard H. Thaler

In order to become a grandmaster class player whose understanding of chess is superior to the thousands of ordinary players, you have to develop within yourself a large number of qualities, the qualities of an artistic creator, a calculating practitioner, a cold calm competitor. — Alexander Kotov

Before this DJ thing, I was hopelessly taking things apart to try to figure out how they worked. I'd go mess around with burned-out cars, with my mom's stereo - I was public enemy #1 in my house for that. So my mom noticed that I was interested in this and decided to send me to school so I'd know what I was doing. — Grandmaster Flash

Hip Hop has become real constrained. The creative juices and creative flows have been diminished. — Grandmaster Flash

I like fixin' up old cars and doing things with my family. — Grandmaster Flash

We can even sing off key, but if it's produced properly it can be a hit. — Grandmaster Flash

Nowadays, when you're not a grandmaster at 14, you can forget about it — Viswanathan Anand

For anybody to say well this is not Hip Hop and that's not Hip Hop, that is not the way the formula was laid down. It was for the people who were going to continue take anything musically and string it along. — Grandmaster Flash

I am one of the founders of Hip-Hop along with my brothers Kool DJ Herc and Grandmaster Flash. — Afrika Bambaataa

All you have to know is mathematically how many times to scratch it and when to let it go - when certain things will enhance the record you're listening to. — Grandmaster Flash

I was a quiet, nerdy kid living in the Bronx. I spent most of my teens in my room, taking apart electrical items to figure out how they worked before putting them back together, and listening to the music my four older sisters and parents played. — Grandmaster Flash

A grandmaster must memorize thousands of chess duels in his head, as these are for him what words of the mother tongue are to the ordinary people and what notes are to a musician. — Garry Kasparov

The type of mixing that was out then was blending from one record to the next or waiting for the record to go off and wait for the jock to put the needle back on. — Grandmaster Flash

No Chess Grandmaster is normal; they only differ in the extent of their madness — Viktor Korchnoi

For us to keep claiming this isn't Hip Hop and that isn't Hip Hop doesn't make sense to me. — Grandmaster Flash

With each success the ability to change is reduced. My longtime friend and coach Grandmaster Yuri Dokhoian, aptly compared it to being dipped in bronze. Each victory added another coat. — Garry Kasparov

I named myself Flash many years ago, as I loved the cartoon. Then my own fans said that I should call myself 'Grandmaster,' because of the way I operate turntables. I put the two together and that was it. — Grandmaster Flash

Disco was brand new then and there were a few jocks that had monstrous sound systems but they wouldn't dare play this kind of music. They would never play a record where only two minutes of the song was all it was worth. They wouldn't buy those types of records. — Grandmaster Flash

Now I stand on the edge of a new world, a new life; pondering what type of fortunes and catastrophes await me. Bring it on, I've handled a generous amount of profound and weird shit in my lifetime that the universe could sling at me and I have always walked away more seasoned. Through blunder and mishap I've grown wise and callused, and I've risen from the aftermath as a warrior, a grandmaster, a champion of bad virtues and noble intentions. — J.C. Wickhart