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“You are not the first to be shocked and horrified by chess,” he assured her. “It is a curse of the intellect. It is a game for lunatics—or else it creates them.”

— Fritz Leiber A Pail of Air (1964)

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Source and credibility

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Source: “The 64-Square Madhouse” (p. 74); originally published in If, May 1962
Work: A Pail of Air, 1964
Source quality: Precise citation Points to a specific work with a page, chapter, date or similar locator, so you can look it up.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Fritz Leiber (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.