Luigi Pirandello, “Naked”

Laspiga: No! No! It’s when we become convinced that we can’t live as we had dreamed of living! It’s when we realize that what seemed so easy in our dreams—so easy that we could almost lay our hands on it—has become difficult, impossible to attain! …
Ludovico: Yes! But because of certain moments our soul frees itself from all common trivialities …
Laspiga: Yes! Exactly! Exactly!
Ludovico: … soars above the petty obstacles of daily life, forgets all about the petty, insignificant needs we ordinarily feel, shakes from its shoulders all commonplace cares …
Laspiga: Exactly! And now free, unshackled, master of itself, it seems to breath in fresher air … it tingles with life, order, enthusiasm … and the most difficult things, as, I said, become easy …
Ludovico: … and everything is possible! Everything is fluid, liquid, smooth-running … a state of divine intoxication … yes, but this happens only of certain moments, my dear fellow, and these moments pass!
Laspiga: Yes, because our souls are not strong enough! They are unable to bear up under all that inspiration, that’s why.
Ludovico: No, it isn’t that! It’s because you don’t know all the tricks, all the surprises—pleasant and unpleasant—that that soul of yours is playing on you as it breathes there in the air sublimity of such moments—when it has shaken off all restraints, abandoned all reflection, surrendered utterly to the glory of its dreams! You don’t notice those things, but some fine day—and it is an ugly day—you feel yourself pulled down to the solid earth again! Because you can’t understand! You can’t! You can’t understand what it means for a life to come back upon you like this … like … like a memory! … but a memory which, instead of rising from within you, comes upon you unexpectedly from without—and so changed that you are scarcely able to recognize it! You can’t fit it into your life somehow, because you, too, have changed! Nor can you adapt yourself to it—though you understand all the while that it once was your life, an experience of yours, as you may have been once—though not for yourself, and as you really were … the way you talked ... the way you looked … the way you acted … in the memory of the other person—but not the way you really were!