If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don't put it there.
Anton ChekhovRead
Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Art, particularly in performance, is inherently filled with challenges and mistakes.
This quote by Anton Chekhov emphasizes the unpredictable nature of art and performance. It suggests that stumbling, or making mistakes, is a natural part of the artistic process, particularly on stage, where the dynamic environment can lead to unexpected challenges. Chekhov highlights that such experiences are essential for growth and creativity in the arts.
Themes
ArtStagePerformanceMistakesCreativity
In practice
Example use cases
During a theater workshop, I reminded the actors that Chekhov said, 'Art, especially the stage, is an area where it is impossible to walk without stumbling.'
More from Anton Chekhov
All quotes βThere are still many more days of failure ahead, whole seasons of failure, things will go terribly wrong, you will have huge disappointments , but you have to prepare for that, you have to expect it and be resolute and follow your own path.
Anton ChekhovRead
Any idiot can face a crisis - it's day to day living that wears you out.
Anton ChekhovRead
To a chemist, nothing on earth is unclean. A writer must be as objective as a chemist; he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dungheaps play a very respectable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.
Anton ChekhovRead
When you want to touch the reader's heart, try to be colder. It gives their grief as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief.
Anton ChekhovRead
Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?
Anton ChekhovRead
Similar quotes
But I have always thought that these tulips must have had names. They were red, and orange and red, and red and orange and yellow, like the ember in a nursery fire of a winter's evening. I remember them.
Neil GaimanRead
From my earliest years I had always wanted to be a writer. It was not that I had any particular message for humanity. I am still plugging away and not the ghost of one so far, so it begins to look as though, unless I suddenly hit mid-season form in my eighties, humanity will remain a message short.
P. G. WodehouseRead
People are always asking me what my lyrics mean. Does it mean this, does it mean that, that's all anybody wants to know. F**k them, darling. I say what any decent poet would say if you dared ask him to analyze his work: If you see it, dear, then it's there. ... I think my melodies are superior to my lyrics. ... I was never too keen on the British music press. They've called us a supermarket hype, and they used to suggest that we didn't write our own songs.
Freddie MercuryRead
Beauty . . . cannot be interpreted. It is not an empirically verifiable fact; it is not a quantity.
Wendell BerryRead
What is drawing? It is working oneself through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do.
Vincent Van GoghRead
For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.
Matthew ArnoldRead