“Anna Petrovna: Kolya, my dearest, stay at home.Ivanov: My love, my unhappy darling, I beg you, don't stop me going out in the evenings. It's cruel and unjust on my part, but let me commit that injustice. It's an agony for me at home. As soon as the sun disappears, my spirit begins to be weighed down by depression. What depression! Don't ask why. I myself don't know. I swear by God's truth I don't know. Here I'm in anguish, I go to the Lebedevs and there it's still worse; I return from there and here it's depression again, and so all night... Simply despair!”

Russian playwright, short story writer, and physician

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was a Russian playwright, short story writer, and physician. He worked in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is known for the lasting influence of his plays and stories. Chekhov’s stage work produced four classics, and his finest short fiction has long been admired by writers and critics. He is also often named, alongside Henrik Ibsen and August Strindberg, as one of the key figures in the rise of early modernist theatre. He practiced medicine professionally while writing literature.