Chekhov Quotations

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.

In my teaching, I try to expose my students to the widest range of aesthetic possibilities, so I'll offer them stories from Anton Chekhov to Denis Johnson, from Flannery O'Connor to A.M. Homes, and perhaps investigating all that strange variation of beauty has rubbed off on me. Or perhaps that's why I enjoy teaching literature.

I played Hamlet, I played Chekhov and Ibsen and all the classics.

I love Chekhov. I could go on all day about him.

I thought I would spent my career doing Chekhov and Ibsen in regional theaters, so the fact that I started doing new plays was a whole new world I didn't expect, and that I would like to keep doing.

I love playing Chekhov. That's the hardest; that's why I love it most.

I love the Russian classics very much, the Russian classical literature. But I also read modern literature. As far as Russian literature is concerned, I am very fond of Tolstoy and Chekhov, and I also enjoy reading Gogol very much.

I'm into parlor dramas. I'm into theatre. I'm trained for the stage. I trained to do Chekhov and Shakespeare, I was trained for the stage.

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

I'm not a walking extra in a Chekhov play; I'm no Slavic gloom or Irish gloom.

Chekhov - shall I be blunt? - is the greatest short story writer who ever lived.

Chekhov understood that people are mysterious and can't be reduced to what we nowadays call 'motivation.'

One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.

Another older writer that had a huge influence on me is Chekhov. More contemporarily, it's hard to say.

There are no whys in a person's life, and very few hows. In the end, in search of useful wisdom, you could only come back to the most hackneyed concepts, like kindness, forbearance, infinite patience. Solomon and Lincoln: This too shall pass. Damn right it will. Or Chekhov: Nothing passes. Equally true.

Chekhov was as important to me as anybody as a writer.

When I was at drama school in the U.K., I was there for two and a half years, and we did one week of television and film. It's right before you leave. It's like, 'We've taught you Chekhov and Shakespeare; you are likely to be in a washing-up soap-liquid commercial.'

I enjoy all forms of writing, but playwrighting is what made me what I am. Not only working with the ghosts of Chekhov and Ibsen and Shakespeare, but what it is to be a playwright, to be interacting with human beings in the live theater and affect people on such a direct, emotional level.

If that stuff really bothers you so much, you should go do regional theatre. Go do Chekhov in Iowa. No paparazzi will be following you.

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.

I think probably I've been influenced by Chekhov and Walt Disney, if you see what I mean.

I wasn't a 'Star Trek' fan, yet I knew who all the characters were. that goes to show what an impact the show had not just in entertainment but in life. I knew who Chekhov was and I knew who Kirk and Spock were, although I probably had never seen the show.

English country life is more like Chekhov than 'The Archers' or Thomas Hardy or even the Updike ethic with which it is sometimes compared.

I realized that after years of studying Shakespeare and Chekhov and regional repertory theater, what I really wanted to do was bust in and rob a bank and jump in the screaming getaway car and tear through the city and get in a shootout.

Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.

Chekhov was capable of casually tossing off deplorable comments in his letters, combined with a very modern anger against anti-Semitism.

The difference from project to project is that departure point. In this case, it was really an abstract idea, an issue of citizenship, but it might be a Chekhov short story or a story from 'The Iliad.' You can really fit anything in there, but what's consistent is that the writer and the director are chosen, the actors are all present before the play begins.

If you're doing a classic play, where if you do a Chekhov, you do the words as written. You can't do that with a novel; you have to do your version of the words as written.

Chekhov, when it's done well and you're ready for it, can actually be quite funny.