The dream of being invisible . . . When I find myself in an environment where I can enjoy the illusion of being invisible, I am really happy.

There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered.

In actuality, it was like the homes of all people who are not really rich but who want to look rich, and therefore end up looking like one another: it had damasks, ebony, plants, carpets, and bronzes, everything dark and gleaming — all the effects a certain class of people produce so as to look like people of a certain class. And his place looked so much like the others that it would never have been noticed, though it all seemed quite exceptional to him.

Nothing tastes as good as looking good feels.

Pretend to be something you’re not until you are — fake it until you’re successful, until everybody sees you the way you want them.

This is what's beautiful about staying in a club or hotel: you're invisible, as is your neighbour.

If Brideshead Revisited is not a great book, it's so like a great book that many of us, at least while reading it, find it hard to tell the difference.

When you’re invisible, no one can see that you’re different.

Earth, seen from space, looked as it had looked in color-stereo pictures, but he found that the real thing is as vastly more satisfying as a hamburger is better than a picture of one.

Venice was the only city he’d ever seen that looked the same in real life as it did in pictures. It was consoling that something in this world met expectations.

Make beautiful things, even if no one notices.

There's nothing like being used to a thing.

Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are.

Nothing is ever the same as they said it was. It's what I've never seen before that I recognize.