Quotes About Visibility

Not many know that I had done a fiction show called 'Kayaamat' for exactly one month. I also did 'Ek Thi Rajkumari,' though I don't think anyone watched the show. That was the plan - I wanted to be on TV, but in such a way that no one watched me.

It used to annoy and frustrate me to have to come in and audition. I would say to my agents, 'Haven't they seen this film and this film and this film? They know what I look like... They must.' Until I directed an episode of 'Roswell.' And all of a sudden, I realized why that was such an important thing.

I didn't get recognized a whole lot at first, but all of a sudden it just started happening. People would look at me out of the corner of their eye, deciding whether or not they were going to come up to me!

It's not like I came out in 'Rolling Stone' and all of a sudden I had a closet full of all the clothes I want.

I think that's what happens when drag starts to go mainstream: All of a sudden, you're watching 'The View' and there are three drag queens on there and it's not a joke. Yes, we're here, we're queer and you better deal with it. 'Cause we ain't going nowhere.

I don't want to be the center of attention. My posture has changed. I walk with my head down and shoulders slumped. Suddenly I carry myself as if I'm ashamed of something.

Judy Blume excels at describing how it feels to be invisible. So how poetic is it that Blume herself is suddenly everywhere?

I have no problems with my eyes. It was because when I became big, I suddenly I found myself playing on stage with 200,000 people, and that is scary. I remember my manager told me just put on a pair of sunglasses, and that should mitigate the panic. So I tried it, and it worked.

Sunglasses are essential for us actresses. I wear them when I don't feel like putting on make-up or when I'm out and about in strong sunlight.

Everybody goes and sees 'Fantastic Four,' but nobody sees 'Sunshine.' I'd have a different career if people saw that.

we want it visible to show when even the most visible joy will reveal itself only when we have transformed it within. there's nowhere, my love, the world can exist expect within.

I felt that even when they were polite they hardly saw me, that they would have begged the pardon of Jack the Bear, never glancing his way if the bear happened to be walking along minding his business. It was confusing. I did not know if it was desirable or undesirable...

That invisibility to which I refer occurs because of a peculiar disposition of the eyes of those with whom I come in contact. A matter of the construction of their inner eyes, those eyes with which they look through their physical eyes upon reality. I am not complaining, nor am I protesting either. It is sometimes advantageous to be unseen, although it is most often rather wearing on the nerves.

I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?

Without light I am not only invisible, but formless as well; and to be unaware of one's form is to live a death. I myself, after existing some twenty years, did not become alive until I discovered my invisibility.

So still and silent that they clash with the crowd in their very immobility; standing noisy in their silence; harsh as a cry of terror in their quietness.

I am an invisible man. No, I am not a spook like those who haunted Edgar Allan Poe; nor am I one of your Hollywood-movie ectoplasms. I am a man of substance, of flesh and bone, fiber and liquids—and I might even be said to possess a mind. I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.

Thus despite the bland assertions of sociologists, "high visibility" actually rendered one un -visible—whether at high noon in Macy's window or illuminated by flaming torches and flashbulbs while undergoing the ritual sacrifice that was dedicated to the ideal of white supremacy. After such knowledge, and given the persistence of racial violence and the unavailability of legal protection, I asked myself, what else was there to sustain our will to persevere but laughter?

All they wanted of me was one belch of affirmation and I'd bellow it out loud. Yes! Yes! YES! That was all anyone wanted of us, that we should be heard and not seen, and then heard only in one big optimistic chorus of yassuh, yassuh, yassuh!

Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me?

Irresponsibility is part of my invisibility; any way you face it, it is a denial. But to whom can I be responsible, and why should I be, when you refuse to see me? And wait until I reveal how truly irresponsible I am. Responsibility rests upon recognition, and recognition is a form of agreement.

I've illuminated the blackness of my invisibility—and vice versa.

After the Vietnam War, a lot of us [antiwar graduate students] didn't just crawl back into our library cubicles; we stepped into academic positions. With the war over, our visibility was lost, and it seemed for awhile–to the unobservant–that we had disappeared. Now we have tenure, and the work of reshaping the universities has begun in earnest.2