Quotes from Luigi Pirandello

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.

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

When you say you are in love with humanity, you are well satisfied with yourself.

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.

Personally, I don't give a rap for documents; for the truth in my eyes is not in them but in the mind.

Drama is action, sir, action and not confounded philosophy.

You too must not count too much on your reality as you feel it today, since like yesterday, it may prove an illusion for you tomorrow.

When the characters are really alive before their author, the latter does nothing but follow them in their action, in their words, in the situations which they suggest to him.

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

Whoever has the luck to be born a character can laugh even at death. Because a character will never die! A man will die, a writer, the instrument of creation: but what he has created will never die!

None of us can estimate what we do when we do it from instinct.

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.

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

Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants, lives so as to give a meaning and a value to his own life.

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.

A fact is like a sack - it won't stand up if it's empty. To make it stand up, first you have to put in it all the reasons and feelings that caused it in the first place.

When [man] is happy he takes his happiness as it comes and doesn't analyze it, just as if happiness were his right.

The man, the writer, the instrument of the creation will die, but his creation does not die.

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

It is misery, you know, unspeakable misery for the man who lives alone and who detests sordid, casual affairs; not old enough to do without women, but not young enough to be able to go and look for one without shame!

Logic is one thing, the human animal another. You can quite easily propose a logical solution to something and at the same time hope in your heart of hearts it won't work out.

Nature uses human imagination to lift her work of creation to even higher levels.

Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants does not live for the sake of living, without knowing how to live; but he lives so as to give a meaning and a value of his own to life.

As soon as one is born, one starts dying.