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

“You're a Black educated fool, son. These white folk have newspapers, magazines, radios, spokesmen to get their ideas across. If they want to tell the world a lie, they can tell it so well that it becomes the truth; and if I tell them you're lying, they'll tell the world even if you prove you're telling the truth. Because it's the kind of lie they want to hear.”
― Ralph Ellison

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

“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

“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

“You see,” he said turning to Mr Norton, “he has eyes and ears and a good distended African nose, but he fails to understand the simple facts of life. Understand. Understand? It’s worse than that. He registers with his senses but short-circuits his brain. Nothing has meaning. He takes it in but he doesn’t digest it. Already he is—well, bless my soul! Behold! a walking zombie! Already he’s learned to repress not only his emotions but his humanity. He’s invisible, a walking personification of the Negative, the most perfect achievement of your dreams, sir! The mechanical man!”
― Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man

“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

“You are not invisible. You just haven’t added enough value to attract attention.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, Sips And Little Portions

“Con lo fácil que sería tener los dos ojos morados o una enfermedad que pudiera definirse fácilmente, una herida, un hueso roto... cualquier cosa que pudiera ser vista y comprendida.”
― Rachel Yoder, Nightbitch

“And that's what I was then. I was a ghost.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, Borne

“Bodies slumped outside
grungy, crumbling tenements,
brown skin fading into translucence;
molecular degradation,
they're becoming as invisible as they feel
to a failing nation.”
― Pedro Íñiguez, Mexicans on the Moon: Speculative Poetry from a Possible Future

“To be able to see white supremacy only when I saw up close someone who’d been victim to it is an example of my own willful blindness and white supremacy’s trickiness—it’s so pervasive and normalized that it almost seems invisible to white people.”
― Hannah Summerhill, Real Friends Talk About Race: Bridging the Gaps Through Uncomfortable Conversations

“This is a game of invisibility and visibility: one is both hyper-visible and entirely unseen at the same time.”
― Sov8840

“Taxi Driver”
There’s a strange kind of liberation in being just a taxi driver— the freedom tucked inside that word: just.

Because you’re just a driver, no one truly sees you. Yet you see it all— the absurdities, the shallows, the beauty, sorrow, joy, heartbreak—passengers unknowingly exposed.

They grant you a diluted respect, sometimes half-fake, sometimes not at all— because you’re just a taxi driver.

But they leave you be. No one's scheming to steal your seat. They want you in that seat. They ride with you because, for now, it’s a seat they don’t desire.

Still, like all fleeting liberations, this too carries disappointment— a bittersweet sting.

You realize the only reason they leave you alone is because you've escaped into a seat they never wanted in the first place. And that hurts.”
― Louis Yako, سرطان في كل مكان [Cancer Everywhere]