If there's a gun on the wall in act one, scene one, you must fire the gun by act three, scene two. If you fire a gun in act three, scene two, you must see the gun on the wall in act one, scene one.

It's very hard, feeling that you're no more than a piece of unwanted furniture in this world.

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

When one longs for a drink, it seems as though one could drink a whole ocean-that is faith; but when one begins to drink, one can only drink altogether two glasses-that is science.

I have no faith in our hypocritical, false, hysterical, uneducated and lazy intelligentsia when they suffer and complain: their oppression comes from within. I believe in individual people. I see salvation in discrete individuals, intellectuals and peasants, strewn hither and yon throughout Russia. They have the strength, although there are few of them.

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.

Nothing lulls and inebriates like money; when you have a lot, the world seems a better place than it actually is.