Yeah, I’m very happy. Of course I’m very happy, and I am proud that I am with Peter Handke , and that we, both of us, we are from central Europe. It’s really very meaningful for me, this Nobel Prize is going to central Europe. I’m really, really very proud.

For a start, the sound of my voice has changed a little bit, which comes [with aging]. But whenever I listen to myself from those ages, I’m proud of myself because I was young, but there’s no music of mine that I listen to and I’m like, “Nah, I wish I didn’t do that.” Everything that I’ve listened to so far, I’m proud of what I did, even at that age.

Very happy, very proud, apart from the loss of many lives, which can never be corrected, or we can’t do much about it. It’s probably the most expensive part of the struggle. But to have won the war and won the peace for ourselves, because if you look at those years of the war, of the genocide, and they are brought to an end, and then we started building and rebuilding and a sense of reconciliation, a sense of allowing Rwandans to live together as a nation. And now a proud people of Rwanda, and socially made progress politically, significant progress, economically the same. I think we could not have asked for more.

Yes, it is. I am proud that I could make a difference to chess in my country and that I could be a catalyst. I remember how unattainable the GM title felt once upon a time.