I like my dogs. People -- not so much.

Chess is a game. Games should be fun.

I seldom resign. My opponent can enjoy the checkmate, and I can learn from playing out an unwinnable position. And sometimes... well...turns out it is more difficult than it looked.

I like this chess quote:
"The number of legal chess positions is 10 to the 40th, the number of different possible games, 10 to the 20th. A player looking eight moves ahead is already presented with as many possible games as there are stars in the galaxy. There are more possible chess games than the number of atoms in the universe. These comparisons impress upon the casual observer why brute-force computer calculation can't solve this ancient board game. They are also handy, and I'm not above doing this myself, for impressing people with how complicated chess is." - Garry Kasparov in The New York Review of Books.