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The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.

Anton Chekhov

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Anton Chekhov
Age: 44 †
Born: 1860
Born: January 1
Died: 1904
Died: January 1
Author
Dramaturge
Journalist
Novelist
Physician
Playwright
Prosaist
Satirist
Writer
Tahanroh
Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
Antón Pávlovič Čéhov
Antón Pávlovich Chékhov
Chekhov
Asks
Artist
Art
Questions
Role
Answer
Roles
Answers

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People don't notice whether it's winter or summer when they're happy.
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Narrative prose is a legal wife, while drama is a posturing, boisterous, cheeky and wearisome mistress.
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Of course politics is an interesting and engrossing thing. It offers no immutable laws, nearly always prevaricates, but as far asblather and sharpening the mind go, it provides inexhaustible material.
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Man will become better when you show him what he is like.
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In all my life I never met anyone so frivolous as you two, so crazy and unbusinesslike. I tell you in plain Russian your property is going to be sold and you don't seem to understand what I say.
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Useless pursuits and conversations always about the same things absorb the better part of one's time, the better part of one's strength, and in the end there is left a life grovelling and curtailed, worthless and trivial, and there is no escaping or getting away from it—just as though one were in a madhouse or prison.
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Humankind has understood history as a series of battles because, to this day, it regards conflict as the central facet of life.
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Once a man gets a fixed idea, there's nothing to be done.
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We shall find peace. We shall hear angels, we shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
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Never bring a cannon on stage in Act I unless you intend to fire it by the last act.
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You confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for an artist.
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What a fine weather today! Can’t choose whether to drink tea or to hang myself.
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The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.
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Faith is an aptitude of the spirit. It is, in fact, a talent: you must be born with it.
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When a person hasn't in him that which is higher and stronger than all external influences, it is enough for him to catch a good cold in order to lose his equilibrium and begin to see an owl in every bird, to hear a dog's bark in every sound.
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A fiancé is neither this nor that: he's left one shore, but not yet reached the other.
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And only now, when he was gray-haired, had he fallen in love properly, thoroughly, for the first time in his life.
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I swear fearfully at the conventions of the stage.
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If I had listened to the critics I'd have died drunk in the gutter
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I divide all literary works into two categories: Those I like and those I don't like. No other criterion exists for me.
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