I was so drunk the whole time that I took bottles for girls and girls for bottles.

When a woman isn't beautiful, people always say, 'You have lovely eyes, you have lovely hair.'

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.

Ivanov: Once I worked hard and thought a lot but I never got tired; now I do nothing and think of nothing, but I'm tired in body and spirit. My conscience aches day and night, I feel deeply guilty but I don't understand where I am actually at fault. And add to that my wife's illness, my lack of money, the constant bickering, gossip, unnecessary conversations, that stupid Borkin... My home has become loathsome to me and I find living there worse than torture.

Oh, dreams! In one night, lying with one's eyes shut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness.

Medicine is my lawful wife and literature my mistress; when I get tired of one, I spend the night with the other.

Money, like vodka, turns a person into an eccentric.