“Medicine is my lawful wife, and literature is my mistress.”Anton Cehov · Scrisori · 1900 · lui Aleksei Suvorin, 1888
You may live truly only in the work that wakes you at night, while living decently in another.
The line comes from a letter to his friend Suvorin, written while Chekhov still practiced medicine and felt guilty about neglecting it. The wife-and-mistress metaphor says something general about vocation: we can hold a respectable job with income and status, yet live truly only in the other activity, the one that wakes us at night. Chekhov gave up neither, but he knew where his heart was.
Why it matters It speaks to anyone with a secure profession and a postponed passion: it lets you admit the split without forcing an immediate choice.