Quotes from Luigi Pirandello

Nati vivi, volevano vivere.

we are ready enough to note the faults of others, while all the time unconscious of our own.

Are we or are we not on an invisible spinning top, whipped by a thread of sunlight, on a grain of crazed sand which turns and turns without ever knowing why, without ever reaching a destination, as if it enjoyed turning like that, to make us feel a little colder or warmer, and make us die (often feeling that we have merely carried out a series of meaningless gestures) after fifty or sixty years?

Because I suffer, sir! I'm not philosophizing: I'm crying aloud the reason of my sufferings. THE

Parlo, parlo, dico sciocchezze, faccio lo svagato; ma non è vero, sai? Perché osservo tutto io, invece; osservo tutto!

Si reconocemos que equivocarse es propio del hombre, ¿no es una crueldad sobrehumana la justicia?

Una notte di giugno caddi come una lucciola sotto un pino solitario in una campagna di olivi saraceni affacciata agli orli di un altopiano d'argille azzurre sul mare africano.                                                                   

But a fact is like a sack which won't stand up when it is empty. In order that it may stand up, one has to put into it the reason and sentiment which have caused it to exist.

We want to live. THE MANAGER (ironically). For Eternity? THE FATHER No, sir, only for a moment... in you.

Prima di guidicare la mia vita o il mio carattere, metti ti le mie scarpe, percorri il cammmino, che ho prcorso io. Vivi il mio dolore, i miei dubbi, le mie risate. Vivi gli anni che ho vissuto e caddi la dove ho caduto io e rialzati come ho fatto io.

We get paid to hang out in this beautiful court! Four puppets on a string, just like those two up there (pointing to the two hanging puppets), waiting for someone to jerk them into life and make them talk.

A character, sir, may always ask a man who he is. Because a character has really a life of his own, marked with his special characteristics; for which reason he is always somebody. But a man—I'm not speaking of you now—may very well be 'nobody'.

and here, in this if I always lose myself.

For man never reasons so much and becomes so introspective as when he suffers; since he is anxious to get at the cause of his sufferings, to learn who has produced them, and whether it is just or unjust that he should have to bear them.

This awful fact…that you can be beside someone, looking them in the eyes…as I was looking a certain person in the eyes one day…and you can see you're a beggar at a gate through which you'll never enter; whoever does go in, it won't be you, ever, you with your world inside your head, the world you see and touch…

It is merely to show you that one is born to life in many forms, in many shapes, as tree, or as stone, as water, as butterfly, or as woman. So one may also be born a character in a play.

Per chi cade nella colpa, signore, il responsabile di tutte le colpe che seguono, non è sempre chi, primo, determinò la caduta?

Dalle vette nuvolose delle sue astrazioni il signor Anselmo lasciava spesso precipitar così, come valanghe, i suoi pensieri. La ragione, il nesso, l'opportunità di essi rimanevano lassù, tra le nuvole, dimodochè difficilmente a chi lo ascoltava riusciva di capirci qualche cosa.

Mah! C'è chi comprende e chi non comprende caro signore. Sta molto peggio chi comprende, perchè alla fine si trova senza energie e senza volontà. Chi comprende, infatti, dice: . Benissimo! Ma a un certo punto ci si accorge che la vita è tutta una bestialità, e allora dica un pò cosa significa il non averne commesso nessuna: significa per lo meno non aver vissuto, caro signore.

Men—do you understand?—have need of building a house even for their sentiments. It is not enough for them to have those sentiments within them, in their hearts; they want to see them outside, as well, so that they can touch them; and so, they proceed to build them a house.

But I now felt that I could no longer patch things up, either with myself or with anyone.

Ah, yes, ah, yes, my dear friend, think it over well: a minute ago, when this thing happened to you, you were a different person; not only that, you were at the same time a hundred others, a hundred-thousand.

Mi basterà, stai sicura, questa indifferenza, per aver coraggio, non già davanti a un uomo, che è nulla; ma davanti a tutti e sempre. Vivo in tal clima, cara che posso non curarmi di niente; della morte come della vita, figurati poi del ridicolo degli uomini e dei loro meschini giudizio. Non temere. Ho capito il giuoco.

Ours is an immutable reality which should make you shudder when you approach us if you are really conscious of the fact that your reality is a mere transitory and fleeting illusion, taking this form today and that tomorrow