Anton Chekhov's Notebooks

Just to clear some things up: yes I do occasionally work...

I subscribe to the RSS feed of the Gutenberg Project (find out about it on their homepage). Someone has posted Anton Chekhov's Notebooks on the site. Here's some interesting excerpts:

Why did Hamlet trouble about hosts after death, when life itself is haunted by ghosts so much more terrible?

_Daughter_: "Felt boots are not the correct thing."

_Father_: "Yes they are clumsy, I'll have to get leather ones." The father fell ill and his deportation to Siberia was postponed.

_Daughter_: "You are not at all ill, father. Look, you have your coat and boots on...."

_Father_: "I long to be exiled to Siberia. One could sit somewhere by the Yenissey or Obi river and fish, and on the ferry there would be nice little convicts, emigrants.... Here I hate everything: this lilac tree in front of the window, these gravel paths...."

The children growing up talked at meals about religion and laughed at fasts, monks, etc. The old mother at first lost her temper, then, evidently getting used to it, only smiled, but at last she told the children that they had convinced her, that she is now of their opinion. The children felt awkward and could not imagine what their old mother would do without her religion.

Mitya and Katya were told that their papa blasted rocks in the quarry. They wanted to blow up their cross grandpapa, so they took a pound of powder from their father's room, put it in a bottle, inserted a wick, and placed it under their grandfather's chair, when he was dozing after dinner; but soldiers marched by with the band playing--and this was the only thing that prevented them from carrying out their plan.

There is a bad smell in the barn: ten years ago haymakers slept the night in it and ever since it smells.

Of some writers each work taken separately is brilliant, but taken as a whole they are indefinite; of others each particular work represents nothing outstanding; but, for all that, taken as a whole they are distinct and brilliant.