Discover the most popular and inspiring quotes and sayings on the topic of Chekhov. Share them with your friends on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or your personal blogs, and let the world be inspired by their powerful messages. Here are the Top 100 Chekhov Quotes And Sayings by 79 Authors including Evelyn Skye,Nikolai Berdyaev,Christina Westover,Nicolas Barreau,Friedrich Nietzsche for you to enjoy and share.
Pavel Alexandrovich Romanov,
So great is the worth of Dostoevsky that to have produced him is by itself sufficient justification for the existence of the Russian people in the world: and he will bear witness for his country-men at the last judgement of the nations.
You must write as if Dostoyevsky himself will be reading your novel, and Shakespeare will be acting it out.
Life is a soap bubble, says Chekhov. And mine just burst.
Dostoevsky,the only psychologist from whom I've anything to learn.
Vorobyaninov, I've got a pressing artistic task for you,' he whispered. 'Go over to the exit from the first-class hallway and stand there. If somebody approaches, start singing, loudly.'
The old man was taken aback. 'But what should I sing?'
'Not "God Save the Tsar," that's for sure!
The Russian famous actors involved [into The Darkest Hour], they are very creative and they will create sympathetic characters.
Unless you think you can do better than Tolstoy, we don't need you.
Stavrovicha, is a selfish, vain, and unattractive creature who deserts her husband in favour of a young officer, Balashev. Her elderly, betrayed
I used to have a great love for Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, the big boys of the last century.
I'm through with Tolstoy. He has ceased to exist for me ... If I eat a bowl of soup and like it, I know by that fact alone and with absolute certainty that Tolstoy will find it bad, and vice versa.
In contrast to the 'Europeanism' and the 'popular foundations' of his brothers, he seems to represent ingenuous Russia - oh, not all, not all, and God forbid it should be all! Yet she is here, our dear mother Russia, we can smell her, we can hear her.
It would be a big mistake to think that Chekhov was a natural, that he did not have to work for his effects and singular style.
Chechnya forms the bookends to Tolstoy's career. He began writing his first novel, 'Childhood,' while in Starogladovskaya in Northern Chechnya, and his final novel, 'Hadji Murad,' is set in the Russo-Chechen War of the 19th century.
Dostoevsky is such a bad writer it is hard to take him seriously as a novelist, though he is a wonderful philosopher.
My handsome, intelligent, inimitable, delightful, prickly, unlucky Alexei Pavlovich, by the power of imagination invested in me I'll make you who you are because I want to.
Anatoli Tarasov, the guy that created the Soviet style of play, was a visionary. He was a creative thinker. He studied ballet and chess and art and read a lot.
I cannot stand Tolstoy, and reading him was the most boring literary duty I ever had to perform, his philosophy and his sense of life are not merely mistaken, but evil, and yet, from a purely literary viewpoint, on his own terms, I have to evaluate him as a good writer.
Reading Dostoyevsky is like sitting in the front row of a theater, where the actors' spit lands on your face.
One of the greatest things about writing as a profession is that the words of Tolstoy, Chesterton and Dostoyevsky have lived for a hundred years and are just as powerful today. Their words have changed me just as much as the people I actually met.
Ah, this is more like it. Tchaikovsky,
If circumstances should make it impossible (temporarily, I hope) for me to be a Russian writer, perhaps I shall be able, like the Pole Joseph Conrad, to become for a time an English writer ... ("Letter To Stalin")
Dostoevsky - is not a realist as an artist, he is an experimentator, a creator of an experimential metaphysics of human nature.
Anton Chekhov famously said that a gun appearing in the first act of a play will inevitably be fired in the third. Throughout
To me, he was the grand master of wine. He was a forceful Russian and a gentle person. The greats of wine all over the world have great affection and admiration for him. What a beautiful man he was and what a privilege to have been touched by him.
Lebedev: A time has come of sorrow and sadness for you. Man, my dear friend, is like a samovar. It doesn't always stand on a shelf in the chill but sometimes they put hot coals in it and it goes psh ... psh! This comparison is worthless but you won't think up a cleverer one.
I took a 19th-century Russian novel class in college and have been smitten with Russian literature ever since. Writers like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Grossman, and Solzhenitsyn tackle the great questions of morality, politics, love, and death.
We will declare frankly that nothing is clear in this world. Only fools and charlatans know and understand everything. - ANTON CHEKHOV
Korsakov got himself shot again, eh? Not surprised. the man's hobby is getting shot. He has a positive talent for it.
Let me give you a piece of advice: Leo Tolstoy is not the only human being on this planet. Yet all I ever hear you talking about is Leo Tolstoy ...
(<>trong>trtrong> Benjamin Sher)
It's Tolstoy, by the way," I say as I open the door.
He turns around. "What?"
Shut up, I tell myself. Shut up.
"The writer of Anna Karenina. Not Trotsky. Trotsky was a revolutionary who was stabbed with a
pickax in Mexico in 1940. But I can understand how the T thing could confuse you.
I went to drama school in the U.K., where we did endless Chekov plays.
Neither Imperial Russia, nor the Russia of the Soviets needs me. They don't understand me. I am a stranger to them. I'm certain Rembrandt loves me.
Tolstoy's characters seem to come forward to meet you, very conscious of the impression they are making on one another and on the reader.
Yevgeny Yevtushenko is a ham actor, not a poet.
If the world could write itself, it would write like Tolstoy.
Only Dostoevsky can be Dostoevskian at such long, tumultuous stretches;
look what intensity did to poor Van Gogh!
Dostoyevsky crucified on the roulette wheel with
Christ on his mind
Dostoevsky does not believe his own words, and he is trying to replace a lack of faith with "feeling" and eloquence.
Lenin, the greatest man of action in our century and at the same time the most selfless.
When he looks back, the critic sees a eunuch's shadow. Who would be a critic if he could be a writer? Who would hammer out the subtlest insight into Dostoevsky if he could weld an inch of the Karamazovs, or argue the poise of Lawrence if he could shape the free gust of life in The Rainbow?
He was a natural, and in the Russian way, tragically above these banalities.
I've been wondering about Dostoyevsky. How can a man write so badly, so unbelievably badly, and make you feel so deeply?
Putin himself is a character out of fiction, an uber-macho former Soviet thug running a massive, expansionist kleptocracy. The man stages photographs riding horses barechested and hunting tigers. His enemies find themselves on the wrong end of radioactive poisoning.
You ... ." just you, always you. My russian Cu**, my enemy, my comrade, my prisoner, my gaoler and my life. Words unthinking. "Love ... ... you.
To be a Russian writer at the end of the nineteenth century must have meant bearing an inescapably bitter fate. The more they tried to escape from Russia, the more deeply Russia swallowed them.
Everyone writes in Tolstoy's shadow, whether one feels oneself to be Tolstoyan or not.
Let me give you a piece of advice: Leo Tolstoy is not the only human being on this planet. Yet all I ever hear you talking about is Leo Tolstoy ...
(tr Benjamin Sher)
Grow strong, my comrade ... that you may stand
Unshaken when I fall; that I may know
The shattered fragments of my song will come
At last to finer melody in you;
That I may tell my heart that you begin
Where passing I leave off, and fathom more.
Tolstoy is one of the greatest artists in history, but he finally became infused with the idea of the uselessness of art. He gave himself to his own kind of religion.
Nabokov's adventures in language and style and naked braininess are really unparalleled.
It is a pity that there was no Dostoevsky living near this most interesting decadent [Jesus], I mean someone with an eye for the distinctive charm that this sort of mixture of sublimity, sickness, and childishness has to offer.
hear him laughing. Perhaps this was the moment to mention Vasili Yenkov. He opened his desk drawer and took out Yenkov's KGB file. He picked up a folder of documents for Khrushchev to sign, then he hesitated. He was
Tolstoy was the most gifted writer who ever lived. It's like he stuck a pen in his heart and it didn't even go through his mind on its way to the page.
The Brothers Karamazov,
Joseph Conrad once wrote that 'it is the peculiarity of Russian natures that however sharply engaged in the drama of action, they are still turning their ear to the murmur of abstract ideas'.106
Any man's greatness is a tribute to the nobility of all mankind, so when we celebrate the genius of [Leo] Tolstoy, we say, "Look! One of our boys made it! Look what we're capable of!"
If the world could write by itself, it would write like Tolstoy.
You're not Dostoevsky,' said the citizeness, who was getting muddled by Koroviev. Well, who knows, who knows,' he replied.
'Dostoevsky's dead,' said the citizeness, but somehow not very confidently.
'I protest!' Behemoth exclaimed hotly. 'Dostoevsky is immortal!
The big thing that makes Dostoevsky invaluable for American readers and writers is that he appears to possess degrees of passion, conviction, and engagement with deep moral issues that we-here, today-cannot or do not permit ourselves.
Only when Prince Andrei was gone did Rostov think of what he ought to have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it. He
Kosykh: What the hell ... is there really no one even to talk to? We might as well be living in Australia: no common interests, no solidarity ... Everyone lives separate lives ... But I must go ... it's time. [Takes his cap.] Time is precious. [Gives Lebedev his hand.] I pass!
Stravinsky the composer I worship. Stravinsky the thinker I despise.
[Kandinsky] arrived, as they say, 'with snow on his boots', and it never really melted.
Poor Dimitri Shostakovich: In the Soviet Union, he was condemned as being too radical; in the West, for being too conservative. He could please no one but the musical public. He revenged himself on both by writing a short piece called 'March of the Soviet Police.'
Dostoevsky's visible world was a world of sensationalism. He may in the last analysis be a great mystic or a great psychologist; but he almost always reveals his genius on a stage crowded with people who behave like the men and women one reads about in the police news.
ROMANOFF: Every Russian family line ends in a czar. That's the only way the genealogist gets paid, sir.
In Soviet writing the demonization of all forms of Ukrainian nationalism has a long tradition, and would make an interesting study in itself. Soviet writers considered almost any criticism of their state - and, from the 1930s, of the Russian Empire - as "fascist" or "counterrevolutionary,
Our fatal troika dashes on in her headlong flight perhaps to destruction and in all Russia for long past men have stretched out imploring hands and called a halt to its furious reckless course.
Ever since studying in Russia as a college student, I had been in a long-distance, one-sided love affair with Chechnya's remarkable history, culture and rugged natural beauty.
It was probably Chekhov who said that the novelist is not someone who answers questions but someone who asks them.
Dostoevsky gives me more than any scientist, more than Gauss.
The Russian dramatist is one who, walking through a cemetery, does not see the flowers on the graves. The American dramatist ... Does not see the graves under the flowers.
He had the unfortunate capacity many men, especially Russians, have of seeing and believing in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and falsehood of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it.
We see a new generation of Russian authors who are not divided from their Western contemporaries either culturally or philosophically.
See how firmly Alexei Fyodorovich endures his misfortune.
Young Stalin Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar Potemkin: Catherine the Great's Imperial Partner
Why should I waste my imagination on myself? - SERGEI DIAGHILEV
Andrei Yefimych is extremely fond of intelligence and honesty, but he lacks character and faith in his right to organize an intelligent and honest life around him.
My name is Dimitri Belikov. I've come to take you back to St. Vladimir's Academy, Princess.
I remember tearing up the first time I read Nabokov's description, in 'Speak, Memory,' of his father being tossed on a blanket by cheering muzhiks, with its astonishingly subtle foreshadowing of grief and mourning.
Vasily chortled. "What a diplomat you've become! You've a most refreshing way about you. Given time, I have no doubt that, despite your humble antecedents, you will learn to conduct yourself with the restraint and elegance of a noblewoman."
"You mean I'll learn to shut up?
He was a six and a half foot scowl.
(on Rachmaninov)
It is regrettable that a Dostoyevsky did not live near this most interesting of all decadents (Jesus Christ) - I mean someone who would have known how to sense the very stirring charm of such a mixture of the sublime, the sickly, and the childlike.
Nikolai's a badass Russian. Badass Russians only have three emotions: revenge, depression, and vodka.
How are we to write
The Russian novel in America
As long as life goes so unterribly?
At that moment Fr. Sophrony was preparing tea for Fr. Vladimir, and he replied, 'Stay on the verge of despair, but when you see that you are going to fall over, draw back and have a cup of tea.' And he handed him some tea.
Saint Petersburg in revolt gave us Vladimir Nabokov, Isaiah Berlin, and Ayn Rand. The first was a novelist, the second a philosopher. The third was neither but thought she was both.
Chernobyl is a theme worthy of Dostoevsky, an attempt to justify mankind.
Stravinskys music, hard, cold, unsentimental, enormously brilliant and virtuous, was now the favorite of my postadolescence. In a different way it achieved the hard, cold, postwar flawlessness which I myself wanted to attain-but in an entirely different style, medium ...
I jabbered too much in class about all the Russian writers whom I admired for being, among other things, uncouth and somewhat humorously melodramatic, such as Gogol and Dostoyevsky, just as it was in my own household when I was growing up.
I'm an Igor, thur. We don't athk quethtionth."
"Really? Why not?"
"I don't know, thur. I didn't athk.
My parents didn't take me to the theatre to see Chekhov when I was growing up - we went to see 'Francie and Josie' once every five years.
Novalis and Dostoyevsky, awaited me just as do the mother, or the wife, the children, maids, dogs and cats in the case of more sensible people.
They certified that I was sane; but I know that I am mad. This confession gives us the key to what is most important and significant in Tolstoy's hidden life.
My first reading of Tolstoy affected me as a revelation from heaven, as the trumpet of the judgment. What he made me feel was notthe desire to imitate, but the conviction that imitation was futile.
I think I must be the only British actor who's played both Stalin and Trotsky. I need to play Lenin so I can make it a triptych.
Shukhov ate his supper without bread
a double portion and bread on top of it would be too rich. So he'd save the bread. You get no thanks from your belly
it always forgets what you've just done for it and comes begging again the next day.
Your slave and enemy,
D.Karamazov
Of course, the fact that Dostoevsky can tell a juicy story isn't enough to make him great. If it were, Judith Krantz and John Grisham would be great fiction writers, and by any but the most commercial standards they're not even very good.