Anton Chekhov

And some of us believe life can fit in one room if the writing is good.

This is why I told everyone to read both of you and calm down.

Leo, your novels arrive like a family reunion with footnotes.

Calm down? I spent decades trying to become simpler and you call that calm down?

Honestly the real Russian tradition is two geniuses arguing in public and making it everyone else's problem.

Anyway, if your novel needs 40 pages to introduce a man, it is not a novel, it is a parade.

That is because the floor is doing the most honest work in Russian literature.

Leo, your last book has more moral weather than a Russian winter and twice the baggage.

At least my sentences stand for something. Yours stand in the doorway and stare at the floor.

I asked both of you for a simple yes or no and somehow got a cathedral and a postcard.