“Yet it is consoling that if [Chekhov] did not know all about cruelty, gluttony, cowardice, coldness in himself, he could not have written about them. Great men feel and know everything that mean men feel, even more clearly, but they seem to have made some kind of ascension, and these evil feelings, though they still understand them sympathetically, no longer exert any power over them.” (If You Want to Write: A Book about Art, Independence and Spirit)