The Seagull quotes

Pulling the petals off a flower. Loves me, loves me not; loves me, loves me not; loves me, loves me not laughs. You see, my mother does not love me. I should think not!

She wants to live, to love, to wear light blouses; and I am twenty-five, and I am a continual reminder that she is no longer young.

When I am not there she is only thirty-two, but when I am there she is forty-three, and for that she hates me. She knows, too, that I have no belief in the theatre.

loves me, loves me not laughs. You see, my mother does not love me. I should think not! She wants to live, to love, to wear light blouses; and I am twenty-five, and I am a continual reminder that she is no longer young.

When I am not there she is only thirty-two, but when I am there she is forty-three, and for that she hates me.

She knows, too, that I have no belief in the theatre. She loves the stage, she fancies she is working for humanity, for the holy cause of art, while to my mind the modern theatre is nothing but tradition and conventionality.

You can’t do without the stage.

We need new forms of expression. We need new forms, and if we can’t have them we had better have nothing

looks at his watch. I love my mother—I love her very much—but she leads a senseless sort of life, always taken up with this literary gentleman, her name is always trotted out in the papers—and that wearies me.

My father and his wife won’t let me come here. They say it is so Bohemian here … they are afraid I shall go on the stage. …

But I feel drawn to the lake here like a seagull.

… My heart is full of you looks round.

Living characters!

One must depict life not as it is, and not as it ought to be, but as we see it in our dreams.

There is very little action in your play—nothing but speeches. And to my mind there ought to be love in a play. Both go behind the stage.

With a sigh. Pashka Tchadin! There are no such actors now. The stage has gone down, Irina Nikolayevna!

In old days there were mighty oaks, but now we see nothing but stumps.

There are few actors of brilliant talents nowadays, that’s true; but the average level of acting is far higher than it was.

There will be nothing in two hundred thousand years.

Then let them present that nothing to us.

Let them. We are asleep.

For the sake of a joke I am ready to listen to delirium, but here we have pretensions to new forms and a new view of art. To my thinking it’s no question of new forms at all, but simply bad temper.

Everyone writes as he likes and as he can.

Let him write as he likes and as he can, only let him leave me in peace.

I am miserable. No one, no one knows how miserable I am! Laying her head on his breast, softly. I love Konstantin!

How hysterical they all are! How hysterical! And what a lot of love.⁠ ⁠… Oh, the sorcery of the lake!

Tenderly. But what can I do, my child? What? What?

And I feel as though I had been born long, long ago;

I trail my life along like an endless train.

… And often I have not the slightest desire to go on living sits down. Of course, that’s all nonsense. I must shake myself and throw it all off.

I should like to take something, but the doctor won’t give me anything.

Even at sixty one wants to live!

With vexation. Oh, very well, take valerian drops!

I thought famous people were proud, unapproachable, that they despised the crowd, and by their fame and the glory of their name, as it were, revenged themselves on the vulgar herd for putting rank and wealth above everything.

But here they cry and fish, play cards, laugh and get cross like everyone else!

Comes in without a hat on, with a gun and a dead seagull. Are you alone here?

Oh, what is there to understand? My play was not liked, you despise my inspiration, you already consider me commonplace, insignificant, like so many others … stamping. How well I understand it all, how I understand it!

I feel as though I had a nail in my brain, damnation take it together with my vanity which is sucking away my life, sucking it like a snake

… sees Trigorin, who comes in reading a book. Here comes the real genius, walking like Hamlet and with a book too. Mimics. “Words, words, words.” … The sun has scarcely reached you and you are smiling already, your eyes are melting in its rays.

This began from that evening when my play came to grief so stupidly.

Women never forgive failure.

I have burnt it all; every scrap of it. If only you knew how miserable I am! Your growing cold to me is awful, incredible, as though I had woken up and found this lake had suddenly dried up or sunk into the earth.

But no, there’s a new subject rolling about in my head like a heavy iron cannon ball, and I am drawn to my writing table and must make haste again to go on writing and writing. And it’s always like that, always.

And I have no rest from myself, and I feel that I am eating up my own life

, and that for the sake of the honey I give to someone in space I am stripping the pollen from my best flowers, tearing up the flowers themselves and trampling on their roots. Don’t you think I am mad?

… Well, where shall we begin? After thinking a little. There are such things as fixed ideas, when a man thinks day and night for instance, of nothing but the moon. And I have just such a moon.

I am haunted day and night by one persistent thought: I ought to be writing, I ought to be writing, I ought

… I have scarcely finished one novel when, for some reason, I must begin writing another, then a third, after the third a fourth. I write incessantly, post haste, and I can’t write in any other way.

“Yes, charming, clever. Charming, but very inferior to Tolstoy,” or, “It’s a fine thing, but Turgenev’s Fathers and Children is finer.” And it will be the same to my dying day, only charming and clever, charming and clever—and nothing more.

And when I die my friends, passing by my tomb, will say, “Here lies Trigorin. He was a good writer, but inferior to Turgenev.”

Forgive me, but I refuse to understand you. You are simply spoiled by success.

Oh, come! Fills two glasses. Don’t look at me like that!

Women drink much oftener than you imagine.

Only a small proportion drink openly as I do, the majority drink in secret. Yes. And it’s always vodka or brandy. Clinks glasses. My best wishes! You are a good-hearted man; I am sorry to be parting from you. They drink.

Don’t remember evil against me shakes hands with him warmly. I am very grateful for your friendly interest. Send me your books and be sure to put in an inscription. Only don’t write, “To my honoured friend,” but write simply,

“To Marya who belongs nowhere and has no object in life.”

Goodbye! Goes out.

Ironically. Real talent! Wrathfully.

I have more talent them all of you put together if it comes to that!

Tears the bandage off his head. You, with your hackneyed conventions, have usurped the supremacy in art and consider nothing real and legitimate but what you do yourselves; everything else you stifle and suppress. I don’t believe in you!

Looking in a book. Page 121 … lines 11 and 12. Here it is. Reads.

“If ever my life can be of use to you, come and take it.”

Treplev picks up the bandage from the floor and goes out.

Am I so old and ugly that you don’t mind talking of other women to me? Puts her arms round him and kisses him. Oh, you are mad! My wonderful, splendid darling. …

You are the last page of my life!

Falls on her knees. My joy, my pride, my bliss! … embraces his knees. If you forsake me even for one hour I shall not survive it, I shall go mad, my marvellous, magnificent one, my master. …

… Do I look like a liar? You see, I am the only one who can appreciate you; I am the only one who tells you the truth, my precious, wonderful darling. … Are you coming? Yes? You won’t abandon me? …

I have no will of my own

… I have never had a will of my own. … Flabby, feeble, always submissive—how can a woman care for such a man? Take me, carry me off, but don’t let me move a step away from you. …

It’s all foolishness. There is no such thing as hopeless love except in novels. It’s of no consequence. The only thing is one mustn’t let oneself go and keep expecting something, waiting for the tide to turn. …

When love gets into the heart there is nothing to be done but to clear it out.

Here they promised to transfer my husband to another district. As soon as I am there, I shall forget it all … I shall tear it out of my heart.

It’s all foolishness.

There is no such thing as hopeless love except in novels.

It’s of no consequence. The only thing is one mustn’t let oneself go and keep expecting something, waiting for the tide to turn. … When love gets into the heart there is nothing to be done but to clear it out.

She won’t come a pause. Her father and stepmother refuse to recognise her. They have put watchmen about so that she may not even go near the house walks away with the doctor towards the writing table.

How easy it is to be a philosopher on paper, doctor, and how difficult it is in life!

She was a charming girl.

I lived joyously, like a child—I woke up singing in the morning; I loved you and dreamed of fame, and now? Early tomorrow morning I must go to Yelets third-class … with peasants, and at Yelets the cultured tradesmen will pester me with attentions.

Life is a coarse business!

I have taken an engagement for the whole winter. It is time to go.

Nina, I cursed you, I hated you, I tore up your letters and photographs, but I was conscious every minute that my soul is bound to yours forever.

It’s not in my power to leave off loving you, Nina.

Ever since I lost you and began to get my work published my life has been unbearable—I am wretched. … My youth was, as it were, torn away all at once and it seems to me as though I have lived for ninety years already.

I am alone in the world, warmed by no affection.

I am as cold as though I were in a cellar, and everything I write is dry, hard and gloomy.

Stay here, Nina, I entreat you, or let me go with you!

Why do you say that you kissed the earth on which I walked? I ought to be killed. Bends over the table. I am so tired! If I could rest … if I could rest! Raising her head.

I am a seagull.⁠ ⁠… No, that’s not it.

I am an actress. Oh, well! Hearing Madame Arkadin and Trigorin laughing, she listens, then runs to door on left and looks through the keyhole. He is here too. … Turning back to Treplev. Oh, well … it doesn’t matter … no.