Luigi Pirandello

Too often, Nature takes a pleasure in knocking down all our ingenious constructions. Cyclones, earthquakes—But man does not give up.

Man takes even himself as material, and builds himself, my dear sirs, like a house.

Or that I can know you, if I do not build you up after my own fashion?

And yet, there is no reality beyond the one which lies in that momentary form which we succeed in conferring upon ourselves, upon others, upon things.

who had intruded himself between me and my wife, not like an empty shadow, no—believe me, please—because he rather made an empty shadow of me—yes, me—by appropriating my body to win her love.

he embrace of another whom she held in her mind and heart

I could be to myself any individual whatever, but not to others

how could it be mine, then, when it so obviously came to me from him

but rather, as a being that was wholly strange to me, in that reality which, as I now beheld him

under a form in which they surely would not recognize themselves