Very often in Chekhov, where he exhibits a little bit of human behavior that you recognize as true, you give a little laugh. It's like a reflex.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the connection between recognizing human behavior and finding humor in it.
Tom Stoppard's quote reflects on the cleverness of Anton Chekhov's writing, suggesting that when Chekhov presents an accurate portrayal of human behavior, it often elicits a spontaneous laugh from the audience. This reflexive reaction indicates a deep recognition of truth in the absurdities of life, showcasing how humor can arise from an understanding of our shared humanity.
In practice
In a discussion on literature, you might say this quote to highlight how humor is inherent in understanding human nature.
Love is - OK, it's 20 things, but it isn't 19. And I think that love reaches for something which is very, very deep in us and is very easily obscured, and is also very easily denied, which is the instinct towards the other person, other than toward the self.
A movie camera is like having someone you have a crush on watching you from afar - you pretend it's not there.
I once did a radio program with a famous materialist, that is to say a scientist who believed that absolutely everything was physical and that all emotions were reductive to little electrical impulses in your neurons. And I found that I didn't believe that. But what the emotions really are, I don't have an alternative theory.
One of the reasons why there are so many versions of Chekhov is that translations date in a way that the original doesn't; translations seem to be of their time.
A Chinaman of the T'ang Dynasty—and, by which definition, a philosopher—dreamed he was a butterfly, and from that moment he was never quite sure that he was not a butterfly dreaming it was a Chinese philosopher. Envy him; in his two-fold security.
Chekhov directors and Chekhov actors love working on his plays because there seems to be no end to what you can find out about the micro-narrative when you're investigating a text.
I am never honored. My career is hilarious to me. I am either under the radar or over the radar.
Some people can do things and get away with it. Comics are famously like that. Why is it that some guys can say the most horrible things and it's not offensive, it's funny?
Never run after you own hat - others will be delighted to do it; why spoil their fun?
The comic spirit is given to us in order that we may analyze, weigh, and clarify things in us which nettle us, or which we are outgrowing, or trying to reshape
The New York papers have long known that no large question is ever really settled until I have been consulted.
All my humor is based on destruction and despair. If the whole world were tranquil, without disease and violence, I'd be standing in the bread line - right in back of J. Edgar Hoover.
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