Tal himself expressed his creative credo as
follows: ""What do you do, when you need to win? Try to give mate? But your opponent will anticipate the attack already at birth and will take all necessary measures. Exploit positional weaknesses? Your opponent will not even think of creating them! Therefore nowadays the two players often deliberately deviate from the generally recognised laws, turning into a 'dense forest’ of unexplored variations, onto a narrow mountain path, where there is room for only one. Too many players now know very well not only the chess multiplication tables, but also chess logarithms, and therefore in order to achieve success, you sometimes have to try and demonstrate that two times two is five... It stands to reason that, with such play, which demands great physical and emotional intensity and enormous nervous output, the percentage of possible mistakes automatically increases. But such games afford everyone much greater pleasure..."
[Often given as "You must take your opponent into a deep dark forest where 2+2=5, and the path leading out is only wide enough for one."]