The Queen's Gambit Quotes

“Beth tried it, awkwardly at first. Jolene showed her again, laughing. Beth tried a few more times and did it better. Then Jolene got the ball and had Beth catch it with her fingertips. After a few times it got to be easy. ‘You work on that now, hear?’ Jolene said and ran off to the shower. Beth worked on it over the next week, and after that she did not mind volleyball at all. She did not become good at it, but it wasn’t something she was afraid of anymore.”

“The words ‘mother’ and ‘dead’ were unbearable. She wanted to run, but there was no place to run to.”

“The world of Kentucky Chess was astonished this weekend by the playing of a local girl, who triumphed over hardened players to win the Kentucky State Championship. Elizabeth Harmon, a seventh-grade student at Fairfield Junior, showed “a mastery of the game unequaled by any female” according to Harry Beltik, whom Miss Harmon defeated for the state crown.”

“She decided not to take the offered pawn, to leave the tension on the board. She liked it like that. She liked the power of the pieces, exerted along files and diagonals.”

“I’m not a beginner.”

“He moved the pawn next to his queen’s pawn, the one in front of the bishop. He often did this. ‘Is that one of those things? Like the Sicilian Defense?’ she asked. ‘Openings.’ He did not look at her; he was watching the board. ‘Is it?’ He shrugged. ‘The Queen’s Gambit.‘”

“Other children had been there a long time and knew they would never leave. They called themselves “lifers”. Beth wondered if she was a lifer.”

“In the middle of the game, when pieces were everywhere, the forces crisscrossing the board thrilled her. She brought out her king’s knight, feeling its power spread.”

“Somehow she sensed that what she had been caught doing was of a magnitude beyond usual punishment. And, deeper than that, she was aware of the complicity of the orphanage that had fed her and all the others on pills that would make them less restless, easier to deal with.”

“She felt powerless and silly. But then she looked at the boards again, with the pieces set in the familiar pattern, and the unpleasant feelings lessened. She might be out of place in this public high school, but she was not out of place with those twelve chessboards.”