Anton Chekhov

The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play. They aren't aware that writing a good play is difficult and writing a bad one is twice as hard.

It is time for writers to admit that nothing in this world makes sense. Only fools and charlatans think they know and understand everything. The stupider they are, the wider they conceive their horizons to be. And if an artist decides to declare that he understands nothing of what he sees - this in itself constitutes a considerable clarity in the realm of thought, and a great step forward.

Dear, sweet, unforgettable childhood!

"Do you know," Ivan Bunin recalls Anton Chekhov saying to him in 1899, near the end of his too-short life, "for how many years I shall be read? Seven." "Why seven?" Bunin asked. "Well," Chekhov answered, "seven and a half then."

Just as I shall lie alone in the grave, so, in essence, do I live alone.

I'm the seagull. No, that's not it. I'm an actress. That's it.

Your talent sets you apart: if you were a toad or a tarantula, even then, people would respect you, for to talent all things are forgiven.

Idea for a short story. The shore of a lake, a young girl who's spent her whole life beside it, a girl like you She loves the lake the way a seagull does, and she's happy and free as a seagull. Then a man comes along, sees her, and ruins her life because he has nothing better to do. Destroys her like this seagull here.

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!

Anyone who says the artist's field is all answers and no questions has never done any writing or had any dealings with imageryYou are confusing two concepts: answering the questions and formulating them correctly. Only the latter is required of an author.

To live simply to die is by no means amusing, but to live with the knowledge that you will die before your time, that's really is idiotic

Let the things that happen on the stage be just as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life. For instance, people are having a meal, just having a meal, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being smashed up.

Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.

When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you; if you go left, you’ll eat the wolves; if you go straight, you’ll eat yourself.

When describing nature, a writer should seize upon small details, arranging them so that the reader will see an image in his mind after he closes his eyes. For instance: you will capture the truth of a moonlit night if you'll write that a gleam like starlight shone from the pieces of a broken bottle, and then the dark, plump shadow of a dog or wolf appeared. You will bring life to nature only if you don't shrink from similes that liken its activities to those of humankind.

Flies purify the air, and plays - the morals.

Write only of what is important and eternal.

One must never place a loaded rifle on the stage if it isn't going to go off. It's wrong to make promises you don't mean to keep.

We learn about life not from plusses alone, but from minuses as well.

All saints have past and all sinners have a future.

If you look at anything long enough, say just that wall in front of you - it will come out of that wall.