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My own experience is that once a story has been written, one has to cross out the beginning and the end. It is there that we authors do most of our lying.

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
Lying
Story
Experience
Ends
Authors
Stories
Cross
Writing
Crosses
Beginning
Written

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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Write, write, write-till your fingers break.
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You will not become a saint through other people's sins.
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Flies purify the air, and plays - the morals.
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There are no small number of people in this world who, solitary by nature, always try to go back into their shell like a hermit crab or a snail.
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One usually dislikes a play while writing it, but afterward it grows on one. Let others judge and make decisions.
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It always seems to the brothers and the father that their brother or son didn't marry the right person.
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Here I am with you & yet not for a single moment do I forget that there's an unfinished novel waiting for me.
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Better a debauched canary than a pious wolf.
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Life is given only once, and one wants to live it boldly, with full conscious and beauty.
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I am not a liberal, not a conservative, not a believer in gradual progress, not a monk. I should like to be a free artist and nothing more.
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People's destinies are so different. Some people drag along, unnoticed and boring—they're all alike, and they're all unhappy. Then there are others, like for instance you—you're one in a million. You're happy—
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People who lead a lonely existence always have something on their minds that they are eager to talk about.
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A person loves to talk about his illnesses although that is the least interesting part of his life.
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Life does not agree with philosophy: There is no happiness that is not idleness, and only what is useless is pleasurable.
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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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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.
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If you cry 'forward', you must without fail make plain in what direction to go.
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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.
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Do you know, Ivan Bunin recalls Anton Chekhov saying to him in 1899, near the end of his too-short life, for how many years I shall be read? Seven. Why seven? Bunin asked. Well, Chekhov answered, seven and a half then.
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Exquisite nature, daydreams, and music say one thing, real life another.
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