Luigi Pirandello

I was not for others what up to then I had inwardly pictured myself as being.

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

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.

If I was not for others what up to then I had believed myself to be to myself, what was I

"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

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."

whom others beheld living and not I.

what I wanted to do was to take myself by surprise, in my own natural actions, in those sudden alterations of countenance which accompany the mind's every movement;

best thing to do would be to renounce the hopeless undertaking and be content with living for myself, without seeing myself, and without concerning myself with any thought of others. 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.

—a life into which, although it was my own, I had no power to penetrate