When you want to touch the reader's heart, try to be colder. It gives their grief as it were, a background, against which it stands out in greater relief.
Anton ChekhovOh, dreams! In one night, lying with one's eyes shut, one may sometimes live through more than ten years of happiness.
Anton ChekhovWhen 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, youโll eat the wolves; if you go straight, youโll eat yourself.
Anton ChekhovMy holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and absolute freedom--freedom from violence and falsehood, no matter how the last two manifest themselves.
Anton ChekhovTry to be original in your play and as clever as possible; but don't be afraid to show yourself foolish; we must have freedom of thinking, and only he is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.
Anton ChekhovThe leaves did not stir on the trees, grasshoppers chirruped, and the monotonous hollow sound of the sea rising up from below, spoke of the peace, of the eternal sleep awaiting us. So it must have sounded when there was no Yalta, no Oreanda here; so it sounds now, and it will sound as indifferently and monotonously when we are all no more. And in this constancy, in this complete indifference to the life and death of each of us, there lies hid, perhaps, a pledge of our eternal salvation, of the unceasing movement of life upon earth, of unceasing progress towards perfection.
Anton Chekhov