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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
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Roles
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Questions

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table what is national is no longer science.
Anton Chekhov
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Be sure not to discuss your hero's state of mind. Make it clear from his actions.
Anton Chekhov
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I'm in mourning for my life.
Anton Chekhov
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Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.
Anton Chekhov
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And it is the way with us that you may express disapproval of the sun or the moon, or anything you like, but God preserve you from touching the Liberals! Heaven forbid!
Anton Chekhov
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Satiation, like any state of vitality, always contains a degree of impudence, and that impudence emerges first and foremost when the sated man instructs the hungry one.
Anton Chekhov
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[Six principles that make for a good story:] 1. Absence of lengthy verbiage of a political-social-economic nature 2. total objectivity 3. truthful descriptions of persons and objects 4. extreme brevity 5. audacity and originality: flee the stereotype 6. compassion.
Anton Chekhov
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You will not become a saint through other people's sins.
Anton Chekhov
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It is a bad thing if a writer tackles a subject he does not understand.
Anton Chekhov
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A man can deceive his fiancee or his mistress as much as he likes and, in the eyes of a woman he loves, an ass may pass for a philosopher. But a daughter is a different matter.
Anton Chekhov
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I can't accept our nervous age, since mankind has been nervous during every age. Whoever fears nervousness should turn into a sturgeon or smelt if a sturgeon makes a stupid mistake, it can only be one: to end up on a hook, and then in a pan in a pastry shell.
Anton Chekhov
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I abide by a rule concerning reviews: I will never ask, neither in writing nor in person, that a word be put in about my book.... One feels cleaner this way. When someone asks that his book be reviewed he risks running up against a vulgarity offensive to authorial sensibilities.
Anton Chekhov
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If I had listened to the critics I'd have died drunk in the gutter
Anton Chekhov
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There are people whom even children's literature would corrupt. They read with particular enjoyment the piquant passages in the Psalter and in the Wisdom of Solomon.
Anton Chekhov
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Every coming year is as bad as the previous one, the only difference being that in most cases it is even worse.
Anton Chekhov
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I still lack a political, religious and philosophical world view - I change it every month - and so I'll have to limit myself to descriptions of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.
Anton Chekhov
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Revolting means for good ends make the ends of themselves revolting.
Anton Chekhov
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Not everyone knows how to be silent or to leave in good time. It happens that even people of good breeding fail to notice that their presence provokes in the weary or preoccupied host a feeling akin to hatred, and that this feeling is tensely concealed and covered up with lies.
Anton Chekhov
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If you cry ''Forward'' you must be sure to make clear the direction in which to go. Don't you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?
Anton Chekhov
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Oh, I have now a mania for shortness. Whatever I read - my own or other people's works - it all seems to me not short enough.
Anton Chekhov