Quotes

“Why do I hear a note of sadness that wrings my heart in this cry of a pure soul?"

“When I get fed up with one, I spend the night with the other.”

“When asked, 'Why do you always wear black?', he said, 'I am mourning for my life.'”

“What's important isn't fame or glamour, none of the things I used to dream about, it's the ability to endure.”

“What a fine weather today!"

“Well, he used to say that the great thing in married life was patience. Do you hear, Vanya? Not love, but patience. Love cannot last long. You have lived two years in love, and now evidently your married life has reached the period when, in order to preserve equilibrium, so to speak, you ought to exercise all your patience. . . .”

“To fear love is to fear life, and those whose fear life are already three parts dead...”

“The secret of boring people lies in telling them everything.”

“The role of the artist is to ask questions, not answer them.”

“The next dish given him was spinach with hard-boiled eggs, while Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, as an invalid, had jelly and milk. When with a preoccupied face she touched the jelly with a spoon and then began languidly eating it, sipping milk, and he heard her swallowing, he was possessed by such an overwhelming aversion that it made his head tingle. He recognised that such a feeling would be an insult even to a dog, but he was angry, not with himself but with Nadyezhda Fyodorovna, for arousing such a feeling, and he understood why lovers sometimes murder their mistresses. He would not murder her, of course, but if he had been on a jury now, he would have acquitted the murderer.”

“The fear of death is an animal passion which must be overcome."

“The critics suppose that it is easy to write a play."

“Sometimes we go to a play and after the curtain has been up five minutes we have a sense of being able to settle back in the arms of the playwright."

“Perhaps the feelings that we experience when we are in love represent a normal state."

“Perhaps man has a hundred senses."

“In the search for truth man makes two steps forward and one step back. Suffering, mistakes, and weariness of life thrust them back, but the thirst for truth and stubborn will drive them on and on.”

“In all the universe nothing remains permanent and unchanged but the spirit.”

“If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire in the last.”

“If ever my life can be of any use to you, come and claim it.”

“I will begin with what in my opinion is your lack of restraint."