Ivan Bunin

“ I MADE Chekhov's acquaintance in Moscow, towards the end of '95. We met then at intervals and I should not think it worth mentioning, if I did not remember some very characteristic phrases.
"Do you write much?" he asked me once.
I answered that I wrote little.
"Bad," he said, almost sternly, in his low, deep voice. "One must work . . . without sparing oneself ... all one's life."
And, after a pause, without any visible connection, he added:
"When one has written a story I believe that one ought to strike out both the beginning and the end. ”

“ His voice was gentler. ... In other respects he was much as he had been in Moscow; cordial, speaking with animation, but even more simply and shortly, and, while he talked, he went on with his own thoughts. He let me grasp the connections between his thoughts as well as I could, while he looked through his glasses at the sea, his face slightly raised. Next morning after meeting him on the quay I went to his house. I well remember the bright sunny morning that I spent with Chekhov in his garden. ”

“ There is a whole column, and at the bottom of it, 'There is also a writer called Chekhov: a discontented man, a grumbler.'"
Sometimes he would add seriously:
"When you find yourself criticized, remember us sinners. The critics boxed our ears for trifles just as if we were schoolboys. One of them foretold that I should die in a ditch. ”

“ I said, looking at his kind and beautiful face, pale in the moonlight.
He was thoughtfully digging up little pebbles with the end of his stick, with his eyes on the ground. But when I said that he was sad, he looked across at me, humorously.
"It is you who are sad," he answered. "You are sad because you have spent such a lot on the cab." ”

“ And it is most important never to take any one's advice. If you have made a mess of it, let the blood be on your own head. Maupassant by his greatness has so raised the standard of writing that it is very hard to write; but we have to write, especially we Russians, and in writing one must be courageous. There are big dogs and little dogs, but the little dogs should not be disheartened by the existence of the big dogs. ”

“ He was very lively, and laughed and read me the only poem, so he said, that he had ever written, "Horses, Hares and Chinamen, a fable for children." (Chekhov wrote it for the children of a friend. See Letters.)
Once walked over a bridge Fat Chinamen, In front of them, with their tails up, Hares ran quickly. Suddenly the Chinamen shouted : "Stop! Whoa! Ho! Ho!" The hares raised their tails still higher And hid in the bushes. The moral of this fable is clear: He who wants to eat hares Every day getting out of bed Must obey his father. ”

“ He said that he was cold when he wrote, and that he only wrote when the thoughts and images that he was about to express were perfectly clear to him, and then he wrote on, steadily, without interruptions, until he had brought it to an end.
"One ought only to write when one feels completely calm," he said once.
But this calm was of a very peculiar nature. No other Russian writer had his sensibility and his complexity. ”

“ He loved literature passionately, and to talk of writers and to praise Maupassant, Flaubert, or Tolstoy was a great joy to him. He spoke with particular enthusiasm of those just mentioned and also of Lermontov's "Taman." ”