Anton Chekhov
Anton Chekhov
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright and short story writer who is considered to be among the greatest writers of short fiction in history. His career as a playwright produced four classics and his best short stories are held in high esteem by writers and critics. Along with Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, Chekhov is often referred to as one of the three seminal figures in the birth of early modernism in the theatre. Chekhov practiced as a medical...
NationalityRussian
ProfessionPlaywright
Date of Birth29 January 1860
CityTaganrog, Russia
CountryRussian Federation
A writer should not so much write as embroider on paper; the work should be painstaking, laborious.
When a person doesn't understand something, he feels internal discord: however he doesn't search for that discord in himself, as he should, but searches outside of himself. Thence a war develops with that which he doesn't understand.
I should think I'm going to be a perpetual student.
He who doesn't know how to be a servant should never be allowed to be a master; the interests of public life are alien to anyone who is unable to enjoy others' successes, and such a person should never be entrusted with public affairs.
In one-act pieces there should be only rubbish that is their strength.
Desription should be very brief and have an incidental nature.
Liubov Andreevna: Are you still a student? Trofimov: I expect I shall be a student to the end of my days.
Never bring a cannon on stage in Act I unless you intend to fire it by the last act.
When performing an autopsy, even the most inveterate spiritualist would have to question where the soul is.
He is no longer a city dweller who has even once in his life caught a ruff or seen how, on clear and cool autumn days, flocks of migrating thrushes drift over a village. Until his death he will be drawn to freedom.
I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them.
Is it our job to judge? The gendarme, policemen and bureaucrats have been especially prepared by fate for that job. Our job is towrite, and only to write.
To describe drunkenness for the colorful vocabulary is rather cynical. There is nothing easier than to capitalize on drunkards.
A person loves to talk about his illnesses although that is the least interesting part of his life.