One, None and a Hundred Thousand

by Luigi Pirandello

The reality that I hold for you lies in the form that you confer upon me, but it is reality to you and not to me; the reality that you hold for me lies in the form that I confer upon you, but it is reality to me and not to you; and for myself, I have no other reality than that which I succeed in conferring upon myself. And how is that? Why, by building myself up, that is all.

Moreover, what harm am I doing you? It is you who are harming me, by assuming that I do not have, could not have, any other reality beyond the one that you give me—a reality, believe me, that is yours alone, an idea of your own, which you have made for yourselves of me, a possibility of being that you are conscious of, as it looks to you, the possibility of which you recognize in yourself; but as to what I am capable of being to myself, you not only can know nothing about that, but neither can I.

“Why is it, when one thinks of killing himself, that he imagines himself as being dead, no longer to himself, but to others?”