It is uncomfortable to ask condemned people about their sentences just as it is awkward to ask wealthy people why they need so much money, why they u… - Anton Chekhov

Better to perish from fools than to accept praises from them.

Women writers should write a lot if they want to write. Take the English women, for example. What amazing workers.

You have known that I love you for ever so long," she confessed to him, and she blushed painfully, and felt that her lips were twitching with shame. "I love you. Why do you torture me?" . . . When half an hour later, having got all that he wanted, he was sitting at lunch in the dining-room, she was kneeling before him, gazing greedily into his face, and he told her that she was like a little dog waiting for a bit of ham to be thrown to it. Then he sat her on his knee, and dancing her up and down like a child, hummed: "Tara-raboom-dee-ay. . . . Tara-raboom-dee-ay." And when he was getting ready to go she asked him in a passionate whisper: "When? To-day? Where?" And held out both hands to his mouth as though she wanted to seize his answer in them. "To-day it will hardly be convenient," he said after a minute's thought. "To-morrow, perhaps."