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.

The illusion which exalts us is dearer to us than ten thousand truths.

To harbor spiteful feelings against ordinary people for not being heroes is possible only for narrow-minded or embittered man.

What must human beings be, to destroy what they can never create?

For God's sake, have some self-respect and do not run off at the mouth if your brain is out to lunch.

They say, tell me what you've read and I'll tell you who you are.

He is an emancipated thinker who is not afraid to write foolish things.

There is nothing new in art except talent.

We all have too many wheels, screws and valves to judge each other on first impressions or one or two pointers. I don't understand you, you don't understand me and we don't understand ourselves.

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.

Which executioner is the more humane, he who kills you in a few minutes or he who drags the life out of you in the course of many years

My 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.

There is no greater sorrow than to know another's secret when you cannot help them.

She had a passionate longing for the garden, the darkness, the pure sky, the stars.

Shabelsky: Doctors are the same as lawyers, the sole difference being that lawyers only rob you, but doctors rob you and kill you too...

Men are made for happiness, and anyone who is completely happy has a right to say to himself: “I am doing God’s will on earth.

I have no will of my own. Never did. Limp and lily-livered, I always obey - is it possible that's attractive to women?

Everything should be first-rate in a person, his face, clothes, soul and thoughts.

Desription should be very brief and have an incidental nature.

A naive man is nothing better than a fool. But you women contrive to be naive in such a way that in you it seems sweet, and gentle, and proper, and not as silly as it really is.

In displaying the psychology of your characters, minute particulars are essential. God save us from vague generalizations!" (Letter to Alexander Chekhov, May 10, 1886)

My thoughts about human happiness, for some peculiar reason, had always been tinged with a certain sadness.

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

I must run away, I must escape this very day or I shall go out of my mind.

If one wants to lead a good life, A HUMAN LIFE, one must work.

Write about this man who, drop by drop, squeezes the slave's blood out of himself until he wakes one day to find the blood of a real human being--not a slave's--coursing through his veins.

The teacher must be an actor, an artist,passionately in love with his work.

TRIGORIN Why do I hear a note of sadness that wrings my heart in this cry of a pure soul? If at any time you should have need of my life, come and take it.

A sweet lie is more gracious for us than a virulent but real truth.

How easy it is, Doctor, to be a philosopher on paper, and how difficult in real life!

A woman can only become a man’s friend in three stages: first she’s an agreeable acquaintance, then a mistress and only after that a friend.

Anna Petrovna: Never talk to women about your own good qualities. Let them find out for themselves.

Existence is tedious, anyway.

We should show life neither as it is, nor as it should be, but as we see it in our dreams.

A hungry dog believes in nothing but meat.

One hundred years from now, the people who come after us, for whom our lives are showing the way--will they think of us kindly? Will they remember us with a kind word? I wish to God I could think so.

Once a man gets a fixed idea, there's nothing to be done.

Every coming year is as bad as the previous one, the only difference being that in most cases it is even worse.

I still lack a political, religious, and philosophical world view. I change it every month, so I'll have to limit myself to the description of how my heroes love, marry, give birth, die, and how they speak.

I've never been in love. I've dreamt of it day and night, but my heart is like a fine piano no one can play because the key is lost.

It's better to live down a scandal than to ruin one's life.

It is always "Youth, youth," when there is nothing else to be said.

..One has to be a mindless barbarian to burn such beauty in a stove, to destroy what we can not create..

When a woman is plain, people say, 'What beautiful eyes you have, beautiful hair.

One should not put a loaded rifle onto the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.

It is not only the prisoners who grow coarse and hardened from corporeal punishment, but those as well who perpetrate the act or are present to witness it.

Only entropy comes easy.

The life of a man is like a flower, blooming so gaily in a field. Then, along comes a goat, he eats it and the flower is gone!