Oftener and oftener [Chekhov] would repeat: “I have written a great deal already, a whole library, in fact. I am not a dramatist. Hauptmann is a dramatist, and Naidenov.” (MLIA)

Chekhov had decided to gather all his friends and relatives in one place while he married Olga Knipper at another, and to leave for their honeymoon on the Volga and the Oka without unnecessary farewells. (MLIA)

Chekhov was in reality a practical joker and a schoolboy in spirit. (MLIA)

The production of “The Cherry Orchard” was accomplished with great hardships. The play is delicate, it has all the tenderness of a flower. Break its stem and the flower dries, its odor vanishes. The play and the roles live only when the stage director and the artists dig deep enough to reach the secret treasure house of the human spirit in which is hidden the chief nerve of the play. In my great desire to help the actors I tried to create a mood around them, in the hope that it would grip them and call forth creative vision. (MLIA)

What road was one to take in the approach to a social and political play? One must himself live with the thoughts and feeling of the role and act in concordance with them. Just as logical action causes reaction, so artistic creativeness causes to appear the idea of the play and its tendency. Let the spectator formulate it himself.

All that concerns the actor is to create the artistic action.
(MLIA)

The creative goal of the author and the tendency of the play were created not by the actor but by the spectator, as the result of all that he saw and heard in the theatre. (MLIA)

Perhaps in our art there exists only one correct path—the line of the intuition of feelings! And out of it grow unconsciously the outer and inner images, their form, the idea and the technique of the role. The line of intuition at times absorbs into itself all the other lines and grasps all the spiritual and physical contents of the role and the play. (MLIA)

Playing a role in a play that was one of the social and political productions, I struck on the line of the intuition of feelings and forgot the politics in the play, which became all the stronger because of it. (MLIA)

I only had to assume the manners and habits [of the character], on the stage or off, and in my soul there were born the feelings and perceptions that had given them birth. In this manner, intuition not only created the image, but its passions also. They became my own organically, or, to be more true, my own passions became the [character’s]. And during this process I felt the greatest joy an artist can feel, the right to speak on the stage the thoughts of another, to surrender myself to the passions of another, to perform another’s actions, as if they were my own. (MLIA)

From the intuition of feelings I went to the outer image, for it flowed naturally from the inner image, and the body and soul of [the character]-Stanislavski became one organically. (MLIA)