Chekhov Quotes

“There should be more sincerity and heart in human relations, more silence and simplicity in our interactions. Be rude when you’re angry, laugh when something is funny, and answer when you’re asked.”
― Anton Chekhov

“Even in Siberia there is happiness.”
― Anton Chekhov

“I was oppressed with a sense of vague discontent and dissatisfaction with my own life, which was passing so quickly and uninterestingly, and I kept thinking it would be a good thing if I could tear my heart out of my breast, that heart which had grown so weary of life.”
― Anton Chekhov

“If you want to work on your art, work on your life.”
― Anton Chekhov

“In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.”
― Anton Chekhov, The Seagull

“Ach, Tchekov! Why are you dead? Why can’t I talk to you in a big darkish room at late evening—where the light is green from the waving trees outside? I’d like to write a series of Heavens: that would be one.”
― Katherine Mansfield, Journal of Katherine Mansfield

“He did not want to be original; he made superhuman efforts to be like everybody else: but there is no escaping one's destiny.”
― Lev Shestov, All Things Are Possible and Penultimates Words and Other Essays

“I have no will of my own. Never did. Limp and lily-livered, I always obey - is it possible that's attractive to women?”
― Anton Chekhov

“You are confusing two notions, "the solution of a problem" and "the correct posing of the question". Only the second is essential for the artist.”
― Anton Chekhov

“If he tells the truth, it is because the most reeking lie no longer intoxicates him, even though he swallow it not in the modest doses that idealism offers, but in immoderate quantities, thousand-gallon-barrel gulps. He would taste the bitterness, but it would not make his head turn, as it does Schiller's, or Dostoevsky's, or even Socrates’, whose head, as we know, could stand any quantity of wine, but went spinning with the most commonplace lie.”
― Lev Shestov, All Things are Possible

“Isn't it wonderful to be able to invite Anton Chekhov into your home?”
― Kevin Ansbro

“He keeps going, going, going on; his people groan and fall one after the other, but he keeps on going, going and in the end, perishes himself, but still remains the despot and tsar of the desert because the cross over his grave is visible to caravans thirty-forty miles away and reigns over the wasteland.”
― Anton Chekhov

“If many remedies are prescribed for an illness, you may be certain that the illness has no cure.”
― Anton Chekhov

“If you asked me what Uncle Vanya is about, I would say about as much as I can take.”
― Robert Garland

“We want to believe that love is singular and exclusive, and it unnerves us to think that it might actually be renewable and somewhat repetitive in its habits. Would your current partner ever call his or her new partner by the same pet name he/she uses for you, once you are dead and buried? Well, why not? There are only so many pet names. Why should that bother you? Well, because you believe it is you, in particular, who is loved (that is why dear Ed calls you “honey-bunny”), but no: love just is, and you happened to be in the path of it. When, dead and hovering above Ed, you hear him call that rat Beth, your former friend, “honey-bunny,” as she absentmindedly puts her traitorous finger into his belt loop, you, in spirit form, are going to think somewhat less of Ed, and of Beth, and maybe of love itself. Or will you?

Maybe you won’t.

Because don’t we all do some version of this, when in love? When your lover dies or leaves you, there you are, still yourself, with your particular way of loving. And there is the world, still full of people to love.”
― George Saunders, A Swim in a Pond in the Rain: In Which Four Russians Give a Master Class on Writing, Reading, and Life

“After moving his family from Yakima to Paradise, California, in 1958, he enrolled at Chico State College. There, he began an apprenticeship under the soon-to-be-famous John Gardner, the first "real writer" he had ever met. "He offered me the key to his office," Carver recalled in his preface to Gardner’s On Becoming a Novelist (1983). "I see that gift now as a turning point." In addition, Gardner gave his student "close, line-by-line criticism" and taught him a set of values that was "not negotiable." Among these values were convictions that Carver held until his death. Like Gardner, whose On Moral Fiction (1978) decried the "nihilism" of postmodern formalism, Carver maintained that great literature is life-connected, life-affirming, and life-changing. "In the best fiction," he wrote "the central character, the hero or heroine, is also the ‘moved’ character, the one to whom something happens in the story that makes a difference. Something happens that changes the way that character looks at himself and hence the world." Through the 1960s and 1970s he steered wide of the metafictional "funhouse" erected by Barth, Barthelme and Company, concentrating instead on what he called "those basics of old-fashioned storytelling: plot, character, and action." Like Gardner and Chekhov, Carver declared himself a humanist. "Art is not self-expression," he insisted, "it’s communication.”
― William L. Stull

“from THE PAUSE BETWEEN


One day the dragonflies appear sudden as the sun.
Speed and softness, they lash sky to air in silent seams.
One's barred wings and abdomen are pressing

to the warm dock's slats. Another lights on the Chekhov book
you bought me, not realizing, like everything, it is a short
story, too.”
― Ken Craft, Reincarnation & Other Stimulants: Life, Death, & In-Between Poems

“But he had to think like a character in a Chekhov play, forever taunted by desires but trapped in a life much too small to accommodate the entirety of a human being. That was why Chekhov was eternally beloved.”
― Gary Shteyngart, Our Country Friends

“She's bourgeois. You know what that is? A low mind in high heels.”
― A.J. Schaar

“Anton Chekhov tells the truth neither out of love or respect for the truth, nor yet because, in the Kantian manner, a high duty bids him never to tell a lie, even to escape death. Neither has he the impulse which so often pushes young and fiery souls into rashness: that desire to stand erect, to keep the head high. On the contrary, Chekhov always walks with a stoop, his head bent down, never fixing his eyes on the heavens, since he will read no signs there. If he tells the truth, it is because the most reeking lie no longer intoxicates him, even though he swallow it not in the modest doses that idealism offers, but in immoderate quantities, thousand-gallon-barrel gulps.”
― Lev Shestov, All Things are Possible

“You're an intelligent educated man. You can see it's not thieves or fires that destroy the world; it's hatred, hostility, all this petty squabbling...Shouldn't you stop complaining and try to make peace?”
― Anton Chekhov

“Mustering the figurative glint of light on Chekhov's broken glass, he gazed into the half-remembered irises of Florence's eyes and imagined her fingers, soft and delicate, against his cheek.”
― Kevin Ansbro, The Fish That Climbed a Tree

“The world is created well enough, only why and with what right do people, thought Yergunov, divide their fellows into the sober and the drunken, the employed and the dismissed, and so on. Why do the sober and well fed sleep comfortably in their homes while the drunken and the hungry must wander about the country without a refuge? Why was it that if anyone had not a job and did not get a salary he had to go hungry, without clothes and boots?

Whose idea was it? Why was it the birds and the wild beasts in the woods did not have jobs and get salaries, but lived as they pleased?

- The Horse-Stealers and Other Stories”
― Chekhov Anton Pavlovich

“If we moved to Bonk we could get a big apartment for the cost of this place—'

'This is our home, Irina,' said the oldest sister. 'Ah, a home of lost illusions and thwarted hopes...'

'We could go out dancing and everything.'

'I remember when we lived in Bonk,' said the middle sister dreamily. 'Things vere better then.'

'Things vere alvays better then,' said the oldest sister.

The youngest sister sighed and looked out of the window. She gasped. 'There's a man running through the cherry orchard!'

'A man? Vot could he possibly vant?'

The youngest sister strained to see. 'It looks like he wants... a pair of trousers...'

'Ah,' said the middle sister dreamily. 'Trousers ver better then.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant

“Behind him the door creaked open. He spun round, clutching the sack to him, and saw three very sombrely dressed women watching him carefully. One of them was holding a kitchen knife in a trembling hand,

'Have you come here to ravish us?' she said.

'Madam! I'm being pursued by werewolves!'

The three looked at one another. To Vimes the sack suddenly seemed far too small.

'Er, vill that take you all day?' said one of the women.

Vimes held the sack more tightly. 'Ladies! Please! I need trousers!'

'Ve can see that.'

'And a weapon, and boots if you've got them! Please?'

They went into another huddle.

'We have the gloomy and purposeless trousers of Uncle Vanya,' said one, doubtfully.

'He seldom wore them,' said another.”
― Terry Pratchett, The Fifth Elephant

“Gökyüzüne bakıp da kuyruklu piyanoya benzeyen şu bulutun süzülüp gittiğini mi gördüm, hemen bir hikayemin bir yerine gökyüzünden kuyruklu piyanoya benzeyen bir bulutun süzülüp gittiğini koymalıyım diye düşünürüm. Vanilya çiçeği kokuyor değil mi? Hemen mim koyarım: "Ağdalı bir koku, çiçeği dul kadın giysisi renginde, bir yaz akşamı tasvirinde kullanılacak..." Sizin ağzınızdan ve kendi ağzımdan çıkan her sözcüğü kaptığım gibi, edebiyat dağarıma tıkıştırırım, bakarsın işe yarar!”
― Anton Chekhov, Marti

“Amalia could hardly keep from crying as she threw out the butts from the ashtray: 'Nora, even drinking is better than smoking. It goes without saying that it's bad for you, but the smell is also disgusting! Chekhov said that kissing a woman who smokes is like licking an ashtray!' Nora dismissed her with a wave of the hand and said, laughing, 'Mama, Chekhov and I will never have to kiss anyway.”
― Lyudmila Ulitskaya, Лестница Якова

“La șaptezeci și doi de ani, viitorul e ceea ce jelesc.

Din facultate n-am uitat-o niciodată pe Mașa
în Pescărușul spunând Sunt în doliu după viața mea.”
― Frank Bidart, Half-light: Collected Poems 1965-2016

“Tell me what you want,’ said Anton Chekhov, ‘and I will tell you what manner of man you are.”
― John Yorke, Into the Woods: A Five Act Journey Into Story

“Know the rules, Coff. If you show a gun then fucking use it.”
― Alex Wheatle, East of Acre Lane