Anton Pavlovich Chekhov Quotes on Advices (2 Quotes)

Critics are like horse-flies which hinder the horses in their ploughing of the soil. The muscles of the horse are as taut as fiddle-strings, and suddenly a horse-fly alights on its croup, buzzing and stinging. The horse's skin quivers, it waves its tail. What is the fly buzzing about It probably doesn't know itself. It simply has a restless nature and wants to make itself felt 'I'm alive, too, you know' it seems to say. 'Look, I know how to buzz, there's nothing I can't buzz about' I've been reading reviews of my stories for twenty-five years, and can't remember a single useful point in any of them, or the slightest good advice. The only reviewer who ever made an impression on me was Skabichevsky, who prophesied that I would die drunk in the bottom of a ditch.

Another piece of advice when you read proof cross out as many adjectives and adverbs as you can. You have so many modifiers that the reader has trouble understanding and gets worn out. It is comprehensible when I write 'The man sat on the grass,' becaus.