A writer must be as objective as a chemist: he must abandon the subjective line; he must know that dung-heaps play a very reasonable part in a landscape, and that evil passions are as inherent in life as good ones.

letter to M. V. Kiselev, 14 January 1887, in L. S. Friedland (ed.) Anton Chekhov: Letters on the Short Story… (1964)