Luigi Pirandello Quotes

To what extent do we self-construct, do we self-invent? How do we self-identify, and how mutable is that identity? Like, what if one could be anyone at any time? Well, my characters, like the ones in my shows, allow me to play with the spaces between those questions.

I'm interested in how we understand ourselves in our relatioships and how we define ourselves.

I know, for a fact, that I'm a very different person on my own than I am with someone else. We are different with each other. These things are constantly adjusted. And that's true of humans. That's not just true of famous people.

Acting is something that we all practice at some time in our lives. We're different people to our mothers, fathers, our friends, people that we hung out together with, people that didn't like us or we didn't like them. We readjust ourselves.

In our own presence, we all pretend to be simpler than we are: thus we take a break from our fellow human beings.

Only other people can make you feel real.

We all perform. It's what we do for each other all the time, deliberately or unintionally. It's a way of telling about ourselves in the hope of being recognized as what we'd like to be.--PERFORMANCE

I'm really fascinated by the self and how our selves shift and change over time and in relationship to different people.

I never thought about my image. It interests me that there are people who do, that they seem to be methodical about it. Maybe things would have gone differently for me in some ways if I had.

The first half of life is spent mainly in finding out who we are through seeing ourselves in our interaction with others.

By reshaping or decorating our outer selves, we express our inner sense of self: 'I like that' becomes 'I'm like that.'

We all have our own ideas of who we are that may or may not be justified, and you can really find out a heck of a lot more accurately from the people around an individual.

When two people are together, they are not two but six: what each one is, what each one thinks he or she is, and what each one thinks the other is. And what is true for people is also true for countries and organisations.

Sixty per cent of how you act is drawn from memories. And it's about who you are. I am a son, brother, husband, father, and caretaker. You connect with certain instances and emotions.

When I am talking to someone, I can constantly see whether I am failing or succeeding. I am regulating what I am saying in terms of how I think I'm doing. I'm always searching for the truth of a subject or person, and I look at every meeting as a grand experiment.

When I first moved from Shanghai when I was five, I just thought of myself as Chinese.

Everyday I have to get dressed. I can't just throw on something and walk out and say, 'I'm not going to see anybody today.' I see me.

I think, in a lot of ways, we underestimate how much clothing plays a part in achieving our identities and in how we want the world to deal with us.

The issue you have with two competitive guys being brought up the same way is that you don't have one person who goes out of his way to make a relationship.

We're all playing a role. You're playing a role at home, you're playing a role at work, you're playing a role to survive.

I carry myself where I speak when spoken to. It's good and bad.

To see yourself, and for others to see you, is a form of validation. I'm interested in that very mysterious and mystical way we relate to each other in the world.

You sort of perform your personality, I guess, to everyone on some level.

I observed once to Goethe that when a friend is with us we do not think the same of him as when he is away. He replied, "Yes! because the absent friend is yourself, and he exists only in your head; whereas the friend who is present has an individuality of his own, and moves according to laws of his own, which cannot always be in accordance with those which you form for yourself.

it is a curious fact, but one which all experience owns, that people do not desire so much to appear better, as to appear different from what they really are.