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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.

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
Ends
Near
Wells
Seven
Well
Short
Many
Asked
Anton
Years
Saying
Ivan
Life
Shall
Chekhov
Half
Recalls
Read
Answered

More quotes by Anton Chekhov

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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.
Anton Chekhov
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Let the things that happen on the stage be just as complex and yet just as simple as they are in life. For instance, people are having a meal, just having a meal, but at the same time their happiness is being created, or their lives are being smashed up.
Anton Chekhov
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Never bring a cannon on stage in Act I unless you intend to fire it by the last act.
Anton Chekhov
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A writer is not a confectioner, a cosmetic dealer, or an entertainer.
Anton Chekhov
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It is the writer's business not to accuse and not to prosecute, but to champion the guilty, once they are condemned and suffer punishment.
Anton Chekhov
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There are plenty of good people, but only a very, very few are precise and disciplined.
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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I am writing a play which I probably will not finish until the end of November. I am writing it with considerable pleasure, though I sin frightfully against the conventions of the stage. It is a comedy with three female parts, six male, four acts, a landscape (view of the lake), lots of talk on literature, little action and tons of love.
Anton Chekhov
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Brevity - the sister of talent.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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In nature a repulsive caterpillar turns into a lovely butterfly. But with human beings it is the other way round: a lovely butterfly turns into a repulsive caterpillar.
Anton Chekhov
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I don't like being successful the subjects which sit in my head are annoyed and jealous of what has already been written.
Anton Chekhov
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Man has been endowed with reason, with the power to create, so that he can add to what he's been given.
Anton Chekhov
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It is depressing to hear the unfortunate or dying man jest.
Anton Chekhov
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You are right in demanding that an artist should take an intelligent attitude to his work, but you confuse two things: solving a problem and stating a problem correctly.
Anton Chekhov
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When a person is born, he can embark on only one of three roads of life: if you go right, the wolves will eat you if you go left, you’ll eat the wolves if you go straight, you’ll eat yourself.
Anton Chekhov
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Everything on earth is beautiful, everything -- except what we ourselves think and do when we forget the higher purposes of life and our own human dignity.
Anton Chekhov
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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.
Anton Chekhov
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We live not in order to eat, but in order not to know what we feel like eating.
Anton Chekhov
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Man will become better when you show him what he is like.
Anton Chekhov