Hoping for the critics' indulgence, the author asks to send money for his story immediately, otherwise his wife and kids will die of hunger. - Anton Chekhov

The artist drank a glass of vodka, and the dark cloud in his soul gradually disappeared, and he felt as though all his inside was smiling within him. He began dreaming. . . . His fancy pictured how he would become great. He could not imagine his future works but he could see distinctly how the papers would talk of him, how the shops would sell his photographs, with what envy his friends would look after him. He tried to picture himself in a magnificent drawing-room surrounded by pretty and adoring women; but the picture was misty, vague, as he had never in his life seen a drawing-room. The pretty and adoring women were not a success either, for, except Katya, he knew no adoring woman, not even one respectable girl. People who know nothing about life usually picture life from books, but Yegor Savvitch knew no books either. He had tried to read Gogol, but had fallen asleep on the second page.

This life of ours...human life is like a flower gloriously blooming in a meadow: along comes a goat, eats it up — -no more flower.

Faith is a capacity of the spirit. It is like talent: you have to be born with it.