Luigi Pirandello Quotes

There is someone who is living my life. And I know nothing about him.

Whatever is a reality today, whatever you touch and believe in and that seems real for you today, is going to be - like the reality of yesterday - an illusion tomorrow.

Life is full of strange absurdities, which, strangely enough, do not even need to appear plausible, since they are true.

I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve with you.

We all have a world of things inside ourselves and each one of us has his own private world. How can we understand each other if the words I use have the sense and the value that I expect them to have, but whoever is listening to me inevitably thinks that those same words have a different sense and value, because of the private world he has inside himself, too.

Pretending is a virtue. If you cant pretend, you can't be king.

Inevitably we construct ourselves. Let me explain. I enter this house and immediately I become what I have to become, what I can become: I construct myself. That is, I present myself to you in a form suitable to the relationship I wish to achieve with you. And, of course, you do the same with me.

Life is a very sad piece of buffoonery, because we have .. the need to fool ourselves continuously by the spontaneous creation of a reality .. which, from time to time, reveals itself to be vain and illusory.

All I'm saying is that you should show some respect for what other people see with their eyes and feel with their fingers, even though it be the exact opposite.

It is so.When YOU think so

If only we could see in advance all the harm that can come from the good we think we are doing.

We think we understand each other, but we never really do.

Those who understood, in fact, say: 'I mustn't do this, I mustn't do that,' so as not to commit some stupidity or other! Splendid! But at a certain point we realize that all life is stupidity; so tell me yourself what it means never to have done anything foolish. At the very least it means you have never lived.

I would love to spend all my time writing to you; I'd love to share with you all that goes through my mind, all that weighs on my heart, all that gives air to my soul; phantoms of art, dreams that would be so beautiful if they could come true.

We're like so many puppets hung on the wall, waiting for someone to come and move us or make us talk.

My opinion is a view I hold until... well, until I find something that changes it.

Life is little more than a loan shark: It exacts a very high rate of interest for the few pleasures it concedes

Women are like dreams, they are never the way you would like to have them.

The secret of living is to find a pivot, the pivot of a concept on which you can make your stand.

It is the hardest thing to close the open hand of someone you love.

Anyone can be heroic from time to time, but a gentleman is something you have to be all the time.

If we have no other reality beyond the illusion, you too must not count overmuch on your reality as you feel it today, since, like that of yesterday, it may prove an illusion for you tomorrow.

In bed my real love has always been the sleep that rescued me by allowing me to dream.

Our spirits have their own private way of understanding each other, of becoming intimate, while our external persons are still trapped in the commerce of ordinary words, in the slavery of social rules. Souls have their own needs and their own ambitions, which the body ignores when it sees that it's impossible to satisfy them or achieve them.

Do you believe you can know yourselves if you don't somehow con- struct yourselves? Or that I can know you if I don't construct you in my way? And can you know me if I don't construct you in my way? We can know only what we succeed in giving form to.