Invisibility Quotes

“Invisible threads are the strongest ties.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I want to do it too!" (sitting motionless)
Nudge: "Nope, you stand out like a fart in a church."
Max: (muttering) "Appropriately enough."
Iggy: "What about me?" (stands still)
Max: "No, you're visible."
Iggy: "Am not!"
Max: (throws a pinecone at him) "Could I do that if I wouldn't see you?”
― James Patterson, The Final Warning

“All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others.”
― Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse

“I don't know why people are so keen to put the details of their private life in public; they forget that invisibility is a superpower.”
― Banksy

“It was a source of both terror and comfort to me then that I often seemed invisible — incompletely and minimally existent, in fact. It seemed to me that I made no impact on the world, and that in exchange I was privileged to watch it unawares.”
― Marilynne Robinson, Housekeeping

“I'm trying to make myself invisible."

"That's an odd thing to attempt.”
― Lloyd Alexander, The Book of Three

“My own survival required me to counterbalance interesting with invisible.”
― Rachel Hartman, Seraphina

“I can physically see the effort it takes for him to open his mouth and force out the words. He's spent so much of his life not being seen, not being heard, that he's forgotten how to realize anything he says does hold weight and is important.”
― Kelley York, Suicide Watch

“…because I was only eleven years old, I was wrapped in the best cloak of invisibility in the world.”
― Alan Bradley, A Red Herring Without Mustard

“(Idea for a ghost story: a woman gets old and falls out of time and realizes that she’s become invisible.)”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“Nope, you stick out like a fart in a church.”
― James Patterson, The Final Warning

“Do you become in visible?'
'No. I'm there, if you know how to look. I stand between the place you look at and the place you see. Behind what you expect to see. If you expect to see me, you do. I listen in places where no one expects me to be.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, Alphabet of Thorn

“There are no clear borders,
Only merging invisible to the sight.”
― Dejan Stojanovic, Circling: 1978-1987

“The way to be invisible - is to truly be imaginary. But since you cannot imagine yourself, you have to clone your imagination into being an image of yourself. Imagine that.”
― Will Advise, Nothing is here...

“Silence is the invisibility of talking. I'd take half an argument over half a silence any day. And I'd take peace and quiet over a full-blown argument any other day, unless it's Tuesday.”
― Will Advise, Nothing is here...

“Eyes skip a low-key profile.”
― Toba Beta, Master of Stupidity

“Invisibility--there are things we can't see now, that are there, that are embedded, that it really takes time in order to be able to see. There are many ghosts that are lurking around and lingering through us that takes the technology of another generation or so in order to uncover and show what those stains and strains and perceived flaws really we're building towards”
― Lynn Hershman Leeson

“It didn't work," said the King. "The cloak of invisibility didn't work."
"Yes, it did," said the Royal Wizard.
"No, it didn't," said the King. "I kept bumping into things, the same as ever."
"The cloak is supposed to make you invisible," said the Royal Wizard. "It is not supposed to keep you from bumping into things."
"All I know is, I kept bumping into things," said the King.”
― James Thurber, Many Moons

“When she was younger, Ellie used to believe that her invisibility was a metaphor for something else, assuming it was her awkwardness, her fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. She had thought as she grew older, more confident, wiser, she would outgrow this not being noticed. But lately, Ellie really felt like a ghost. She would be in a place, but not really there. People looked through her, past her. Her invisibility had taken on a life of its own. It wasn't a metaphor anymore, or a defense mechanism or eccentric little tic. She was actually invisible. At least, that was how it felt to her.
Ellie wondered whether her parents were to blame. They were, after all, children of the sixties who had met at a love-in or lie-down or something of that sort, about which Ellie knew little except that a lot of drugs had been involved. Could Ellie's lack of physical presence be a genetic mutation caused by acid or mushrooms? Ellie grew up on their hippie commune among the highest, densest redwoods, where they dug their hands deep into the soil and grew their own food, made their own clothes. So perhaps it is there that the mystery is solved. Ellie indeed was a child of the earth, a baby of beiges and taupes and browns and muted greens. Nature doesn't scream and shout, demanding constant attention, and neither did Ellie. Maybe her invisibility was just her blending right in.”
― Amy S. Foster, When Autumn Leaves

“It makes no sense to expect or claim to 'make the invisible visible', or the unknown known, or the unthinkable thinkable. We can draw conclusions about the invisible; we can postulate its existence with relative certainty. But all we can represent is an analogy, which stands for the invisible but is not it.”
― Gerhard Richter

“How can you see and sue something invisible?”
― Toba Beta, My Ancestor Was an Ancient Astronaut

“I swim like I’m water. I’m like water in water, and that’s how I move so invisibly.”
― Jarod Kintz, Eggs, they’re not just for breakfast

“Nobody's looking at me. Nobody does look at middle-aged women.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Night Side of the River

“Invisibility initiates two doctrines in itself; for one who is curious to discover or not interested in focusing upon it.”
― Ehsan Sehgal

“She took off her glasses and put them in my hand. 'You know, without these, I can't see anything. What's funny is that it's like no one else can see me either. Isn't it strange? I kind of feel invisible.”
― Justin Cronin, The City of Mirrors

“It was at that point that it hit me like a truck that this man was not presently rational and that I was entirely at his mercy. I became acutely aware of the fact that he was not going to listen to anything that I had to say. This may sound peculiar, given that I was the focus of his brutal actions, but the feeling that came over me then was one of sheer invisibility. I realized that who I was, my personality, my character, my identity, were totally irrelevant to him and completely subsumed by his. It registered then that Robert was intending to rape me and kill me, and that there was nothing that I could do to stop him.”
― Karyn L. Freedman, One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery

“Poverty, I salute you. Through
your grace I have become a magician.
For I can see the world, but none see me.”
― A.N.D. Haksar, Simhasana Dvatrimsika: Thirty-Two Tales of the Throne of Vikramaditya

“She relaxed her mind and let her body dissolve. Bone and tendon quivered until her arms, hands, and fingers looked like black specks waving in the dark. Soon she was free from gravity and drifting up the stairs.
But as she twisted through the gloom, something foreign tangled with her invisible body. It wove through her with a furry tickle, leaving a pungent scent of decay. It didn't have the sensation of steam, dust, or smog. She curled back, trying to escape the sickening smell, but whatever it was moved with her, sinuous like a snake, coiling around her. She twirled, then sprang forward, but it held her. The air became thick and gluey, her cells no longer able to pull in oxygen through osmosis.”
― Lynne Ewing, Moon Demon

“Of all the things that send women to therapy, I bet the main one is a sense of being invisible to themselves.”
― Annie de Monchaux, Audrey's Gone AWOL

“It is incumbent upon us to list you your fears lest you forget them: that of being needy; of being clingy; of being odd; of being invisible; of being visible; of being shamed; of being shunned; of being deceived; of being bullied, of being abandoned; of being hit; of being talked about; of being pitied; of being mocked; of being thought both "child" and at the same time "old woman"; of anger; of others; of making mistakes; of knowing instinctively; of sadness; of loneliness; of failure; of loss; of love; of death. If not death, then of living - of the body, its needs, its bits, its daring bits, its unwanted bits. Then the shudders, the ripples, our legs turning to pulp because of those shudders and ripples. On a scale of one to ten, nine and nine-tenths of us believe in the loss of our power and in succumbing to weakness, also in the slyness of others. In instability too, we believe. Nine and nine-tenths of us think we are spied upon, that we replay old trauma, that we are tight and unhappy and numb in our facial expression. These are our fears, Dear Susannah Eleanor Lizabetta Effie. Note them please. Remember these points please. Susannah, oh our Susannah. We are afraid.”
― Anna Burns, Milkman