I see nothing for the treatment of my misery but the melancholy and very local palliative of articulate art.

Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.

I was weeping again, drunk on the impossible past.

Only ambitious nonentities and hearty mediocrities exhibit their rough drafts. It's like passing around samples of sputum.

- Might it console you to know that I expect nothing but torture from her return? That I regard you as a bird of paradise? She shook her head. - That my admiration for you is painfully strong? - I want Van – she cried – and not intangible admiration. - Intangible? You goose. You my gauge it, you may brush it once very lightly with the knuckles of you gloved hand. I said knuckles. I said once. That will do. I can't kiss you. Not even your burning face. Good-bye, pet. Tell Edmond to take a nap after he returns. I shall need him at two in the morning.

No author has created with less emphasis such pathetic characters as Chekhov has.

There are some varieties of fiction that I never touch - mystery stories, for instance, which I abhor, and historical novels. I also detest the so-called "powerful" novel - full of commonplace obscenities and torrents of dialog.