Anton Chekhov

Anton Chekhov (1860 - 1904), full name Anton Pavlovich Chekhov, was a Russian playwright and short-story writer. He is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. Chekhov was a physician by profession, however, his career as a playwright produced four classics. The Seagull, Uncle Vanya, Three Sisters, and The Cherry Orchard were among his noted plays. At first he wrote stories to earn money, but as his artistic ambition grew later and he made formal innovations that influenced the evolution of the modern short story. He insisted that the role of an artist was to ask questions, not to answer them.

Wisdom & Quotes

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

- advice to a novice playwright, quoted in John Gassner and Edward Quinn, eds., The Reader's Encyclopedia of World Drama

William Jennings Bryan