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I confess I seldom commune with my conscience when I write.

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
Commune
Communes
Confess
Seldom
Conscience
Write
Writing

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Brevity - the sister of talent.
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There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table what is national is no longer science.
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Watching a woman make Russian pancakes, you might think that she was calling on the spirits or extracting from the batter the philosopher's stone.
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When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say, 'You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair.'
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There is something beautiful, touching and poetic when one person loves more than the other, and the other is indifferent.
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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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[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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I myself smoke, but my wife asked me to speak today on the harmfulness of tobacco, so what can I do? If it's tobacco, then let it be tobacco.
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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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Every person lives his real, most interesting life under the cover of secrecy.
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[Ognev] recalled endless, heated, purely Russian arguments, when the wranglers, spraying spittle and banging their fists on the table, fail to understand yet interrupt one another, themselves not even noticing it, contradict themselves with every phrase, change the subject, then, having argued for two or three hours, begin to laugh.
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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.
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It's easier to ask for money from the poor than from the wealthy.
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You've only got to begin to do anything to find out how few honest, honourable people there are. Sometimes, when I can't sleep, I think: Oh Lord, you've given us huge forests, infinite fields, and endless horizons, and we, living here, ought really to be giants.
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The stupider the peasant, the better the horse understands him.
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Writers are as jealous as pigeons.
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[In] death at least there would be one profit it would no longer be necessary to eat, to drink, to pay taxes, or to [offend] others and as a man lies in his grave not one year, but hundreds and thousands of years, the profit was enormous. The life of man was, in short, a loss, and only his death a profit.
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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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Calculating selfishness is the annihilation of self.
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You look boldly ahead isn't it only that you don't see or divine anything terrible in the future because life is still hidden from your young eyes.
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