One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand Quotes

“No name. No memory today of yesterday’s name; of today’s name, tomorrow. If the name is the thing; if a name in us is the concept of every thing placed outside of us; and without a name you don’t have the concept, and the thing remains in us as if blind, indistinct and undefined: well then, let each carve this name that I bore among men, a funeral epigraph, on the brow of that image in which I appeared to him, and then leave it in peace, and let there be no more talk about it. It is fitting for the dead. For those who have concluded. I am alive and I do not conclude. Life does not conclude. And life knows nothing of names. This tree, tremulous pulse of new leaves. I am this tree. Tree, cloud; tomorrow book or wind: the book I read, the wind I drink. All outside, wandering.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“The capacity for deluding ourselves that today's reality is the only true one, on the one hand, sustains us, but on the other, it plunges us into an endless void, because today's reality is destined to prove delusion for us tomorrow; and life doesn't conclude. It can't conclude. Tomorrow if it concludes, it's finished.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“The idea that others saw in me one that was not the I whom I knew, one whom they alone could know, as they looked at me from without, with eyes that were not my own, eyes that conferred upon me an aspect destined to remain always foreign to me, although it was one that was in me, one that was my own to them (a "mine," that is to say, that was not for me!)—a life into which, although it was my own, I had no power to penetrate—this idea gave me no rest.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“The unfortunate part is that you, my dear friend, will never know, and I shall never be able to tell you, how what you say to me is translated inside me. You did not speak Turkish, no. We both employed, you and I, the same language, the same words. But is it our fault, yours and mine, if words in themselves are empty? Empty, my dear friend. You fill them with your meaning, as you speak them to me; while I, in taking them in, inevitably fill them with my own. We thought we understood each other; we did not understand each other at all.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One and One Hundred Thousand

“Do you recognize perhaps, also you, now, that a minute ago you were another?”
― Luigi Pirandello, Uno, nessuno, e centomila

“And the air is new. And everything, instant by instant, is as it is, preparing to appear. [...] This is the only way I can live now. To be reborn moment by moment. [...] I die at every instant, and I am reborn, new and without memories: live and whole, no longer inside myself, but in every thing outside.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“And no one realizes we should all, always, look like that, each with his eyes full of horror at his own, inescapable solitude.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“Solitude is never where you are; it is always where you are not, and is only possible with a stranger present; whatever the place or whoever the person, it must be one that is wholly ignorant concerning you, and concerning which or whom you are equally ignorant, so that will and sensation remain suspended and confused in an anxious uncertainty, while with the ceasing of all affirmation on your part, your own inner consciousness ceases at the same time. True solitude is to be found in a place that lives a life of its own, but which for you holds no familiar footprint, speaks in no known voice, and where accordingly the stranger is yourself.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“Fate, fortune, chance: all snares of life. You want to be, eh? There’s this catch: in abstract, you cannot just be. The being must be trapped in a form, and for some time it has to stay in it, here or there, this way or that. And everything, as long as it lasts, bears the penalty of its form, the penalty of being this way and no longer being able to be otherwise.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“Voi credete di conoscervi se non vi costruite in qualche modo? E ch'io possa conoscervi, se non vi costruisco a modo mio? E voi me, se non mi costruite a modo vostro? Possiamo conoscere soltanto quello a cui riusciamo a dar forma. Ma che conoscenza può essere? È forse questa forma la cosa stessa? Sì, tanto per me, quanto per voi; ma non così per me quanto per voi: tanto vero che io non mi riconosco nella forma che mi date voi, né voi in quella che vi do io.”
― Luigi Pirandello, Uno, nessuno e centomila

“Era proprio la mia quell’immagine intravista in un lampo? Sono proprio così io, di fuori, quando vivendo - non mi penso? Dunque per gli altri sono quell’estraneo sospeso nello specchio: quello, e non già quale io mi conosco: quell’uno lì che io stesso prima, scorgendolo, non ho riconosciuto. Sono quell’estraneo che non posso veder vivere se non così, in un attimo impensato. Un estraneo che possono vedere e conoscere solamente gli altri, e io no.”
― Luigi Pirandello, Uno, nessuno e centomila

“I wanted to be alone in an altogether unusual way, a new way. Quite the contrary of what you think: that is to say, without myself and, to be precise, with a stranger at hand.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, None and a Hundred Thousand

“Was it really my own, that image glimpsed in a flash? Am I really like that, from the outside, when—all the while living—I do not think of myself? For others, then, I am that stranger whom I surprised in a mirror; I am he and not the I whom I know; I am that one there whom I myself at first, upon becoming aware of him, did not recognize. I am that stranger whom I am unable to see living except like that, in a thoughtless second. A stranger whom others alone can see and know, not I.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“Una realtà non ci fu data e non c'è, dobbiamo farcela noi: non sarà mai una per tutti e per sempre ma di continuo e infinitamente mutabile.”
― Luigi Pirandello, Uno, nessuno e centomila - Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore

“Ah, to be no longer conscious of being, like a stone, like a plant! To remember no longer even one's own name! Stretched out upon the grass, hands interlaced at the back of one's neck, to look up at the dazzling, sun-puffed clouds as they sail past in the blue sky, to listen to the wind which makes, up there in the chestnut grove, a sound like the breaking of the sea.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“Io non potevo vedermi vivere”
― Luigi Pirandello, Uno, nessuno e centomila - Quaderni di Serafino Gubbio operatore

“La vera solitudine è in un luogo che vive per sé e che per voi non ha traccia né voce, e dove dunque l’estraneo siete voi.”
― Luigi Pirandello, Uno, nessuno e centomila

“That drawer was full of photographs of her. She showed me any number, old and recent.

"All dead," I told her.

She turned her head and glanced at me quickly:

"Dead?"

"Yes, for all they appear to be alive."

"Even this one with the smile?"

"Yes. And this pensive one: and the one with the eyes drooped."

"But how can they be dead, if I here am alive?"

"Ah, you, yes; because you do not see yourself now. But when you are in front of a mirror, the moment you look at yourself again, you are no longer alive."

"And why not?"

"Because, in order to behold yourself, you must for a moment halt life within you. Excuse me, but seeing that you go to the photographer's so often—when the photographer, in front of you with his camera, tells you to be sure not to move, you must have noticed—life is suspended in you—and you feel that such suspension cannot last more than a second—it is like turning into a statue—For life is constant motion, and one can never really see one's self."

"You mean to say that I, while living, have never seen myself?"

"Never; not as I can see you. But I see a likeness of you that is mine and mine alone; it is assuredly not yours. You, while living, have possibly been able to catch no more than a bare glimpse of your own in some snapshot or other that has been made of you; and it has come as an unpleasant surprise; it may even have pained you to recognize yourself, in helter-skelter motion like that."

"That's true."

"For you can only know yourself when you strike an attitude: a statue: not alive. When one is alive, one lives and does not see himself. To know one's self is to die. The reason you spend so much time looking at yourself in that mirror, in all mirrors, is that you are not alive; you do not know how to live, you cannot or you do not want to live. You want too much to know yourself; and meanwhile, you are not living."

"Why, nothing of the sort! I never can succeed in keeping still a moment."

"But you want to see yourself always. In every act of your life. It is as if you had before you always the likeness of yourself, in every action, in every gesture. It is from this that your intolerance comes. You do not want the feeling in you to be blind. You compel it to open its eyes and look at itself in a mirror which you are forever holding up in front of it. And feeling, the moment it sees itself, turns ice within you. You cannot go on living before a mirror. One's aim should be never to see one's self. For the reason that, however much you may try, you can never know yourself as others see you. And of what use is it, then, to know one's self for one's self's sake? You may even come to the point where you will no longer be able to understand why you must have that likeness which the mirror gives you back.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“Il ricordo non è altro che il riconoscimento di realtà passate, che restano in noi come un sogno. E sarà sogno domani per noi la realtà d'oggi.”
― Luigi Pirandello, Uno, nessuno e centomila

“But is it our fault, yours and mine, if words in themselves are empty? Empty, my dear friend. You fill them with your meaning, as you speak them to me; while I, in taking them in, inevitably fill them with my own. We thought we understood each other; we did not understand each other at all.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“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.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, None and a Hundred Thousand

“we are ready enough to note the faults of others, while all the time unconscious of our own.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, None and a Hundred Thousand

“¿Saben, en cambio, sobre qué se apoya todo? Se lo digo yo. Sobre la presunción —Dios se la conserve siempre— de que la realidad, tal como es para ustedes, debe ser y es igual para todos los demás.”
― Luigui Pirandello, Uno, ninguno y cien mil

“If I was not for others what up to then I had believed myself to be to myself, what was I?”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“Ah che tentazione di prenderle il viso tra le mani per costringerla a guardare nell'abisso di due occhi ben altri da quelli da cui voleva essere guardata!”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“Nulla turba e sconcerta piú di due occhi vani che dimostrino di non vederci, o di non vedere ciò che noi vediamo.
"Perché guardi cosí?"
E nessuno pensa che tutti dovremmo guardare sempre cosí, ciascuno con gli occhi pieni dell'orrore della propria solitudine senza scampo).”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“Perché bisogna che lei fermi un attimo in sé la vita, per vedersi. Come davanti a una macchina fotografica. Lei s’atteggia. E atteggiarsi è come diventare statua per un momento. La vita si muove di continuo, e non può mai veramente vedere se stessa"
"Lei non può conoscersi che atteggiata: statua: non viva. Quando uno vive, vive e non si vede. Conoscersi è morire. Lei sta tanto a mirarsi in codesto specchio, in tutti gli specchi, perché non vive; non sa, non può o non vuol vivere. Vuole troppo conoscersi, e non vive."
Non si può vivere davanti a uno specchio. Procuri di non vedersi mai. Perché, tanto, non riuscirà mai a conoscersi per come la vedono gli altri. E allora che vale che si conosca solo per sé? Le può avvenire di non comprendere piú perché lei debba avere quell'immagine che lo specchio le ridà.”
― Luigi Pirandello, UNO NESSUNO E CENTOMILA

“But I now felt that I could no longer patch things up, either with myself or with anyone.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“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.”
― Luigi Pirandello, One, No One, and One Hundred Thousand

“E eu devia ser louco de verdade, se esperava que uma boneca como aquela enlouquecesse juntamente comigo, assim por nada.”
― Luigi Pirandello, Uno, nessuno, e centomila