... You get surreal numbers by playing games. I used to feel guilty in Cambridge that I spent all day playing games, while I was supposed to be doing mathematics. Then, when I discovered surreal numbers, I realized that playing games IS math.
If you are not playing a player, any player, for two, three, four games, then you don't have to give a reason for that. But if it gets to eight or nine games, then you have to explain the situation. What's going on?
There were situations in my career where I played much better than another player in my position, but that player had a better name in terms of commercial appeal.
I think I had a positive development at Chelsea. I was very young when I arrived, only 20, and the problem I had was injuries.
When I arrived at Chelsea, I was at Leicester and I had just won my first title with a club.
A quarterback that goes out and performs for you and is a franchise quarterback is more valuable than a player playing another position, but there's a lot more risk there. It's a more difficult position to play, and there are lot more failures.
I liked being home playing in front of my people, but I just did not like the situation because I was playing shooting guard, and that is not my position. I would play it if someone like Rip got hurt, but to do it for an entire season, that is not my position. I got it done when I was asked to do. But inside, I know that is not me.
Any player over 40-50 games per season will have moments of fatigue, let alone a 22-year-old who has a lot to learn on how to control games and pace himself throughout 90 minutes.
I believe that if we don't make moves to get people who don't play games to understand them, then the position of video games in society will never improve. Society's image of games will remain largely negative, including that stuff about playing games all the time badly damaging you or rotting your brain or whatever.
There is always a lot of pressure at Chelsea, but we are used to this and have to make sure we keep winning games.
I had a good football intelligence. I didn't need 10 games to get used to a position. I could go out and do a job.
The captain was a good chess player, and the games were always interesting. Yossarian had stopped playing chess with him because the games were so interesting they were foolish.
It used to tear me up when we lost games, it stayed in me for weeks. I was a bad loser at everything. When we used to play board games, I had fights with my family and I had to go to my room.
I started lower down the leagues with Coventry, so I'd had that taste of first-team action at a young age. I'd already played 40 or 50 games before moving on, and when I got to Norwich, I had to bide my time at the start.
Suddenly, we humans - a recently arrived species, no longer subject to the checks and balances inherent in nature - have grown in population, technology and intelligence to a position of terrible power.
I have a bad back partially from playing the drums and singing. I used to have to hold my body in such a position that my spine got out of alignment.