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“A woman must continually watch herself. She is almost continually accompanied by her own image of herself. Whilst she is walking across a room or whilst she is weeping at the death of her father, she can scarcely avoid envisaging herself walking or weeping. From earliest childhood she has been taught and persuaded to survey herself continually. And so she comes to consider the surveyor and the surveyed within her as the two constituent yet always distinct elements of her identity as a woman. She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another....

One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight.”
― John Berger, Ways of Seeing

“I have said that he has the power to deliver a compliment and make it hurt. So, too, he can say something that ought to be insulting and deliver it in such a way that it feels like being truly seen.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“How hidden the heart, Nance thought. How frightened we are of being known, and yet how desperately we long for it.”
― Hannah Kent, The Good People

“It doesn’t take much to come into your own; all it takes is someone’s gaze. It’s not totally accurate to say that I felt seen. It was more that: Beheld by her, I learned how to become myself. Her interest actualized me.”
― Ling Ma, Bliss Montage

“At times I've struggled to feel seen, to have my history feel seen, to have where I come from feel seen because I 'turned out great.' But that doesn't meant that I Am Fine. I am working every day, tirelessly, like you wouldn't believe, on being fine, f**king finally, can we get this over with, I'm so tired and I just want to travel and eat and smile and move through the world with a semblance of peace.”
― Lane Moore, How to Be Alone: If You Want To, and Even If You Don't

“For all his secrecy and fear of being seen, he was touched that we had observed him so closely, and with such love. He loved that we knew him. This is one reason people need to believe in God -- because we want someone to know us, truly, all the way through, even the worst of us.”
― Tim Kreider, We Learn Nothing

“It's beautiful when someone recognizes and appreciates us for who we are, for how we are, without trying to change us, and without any judgment. Unconditional acceptance is the truest form of love.”
― Akiroq Brost

“...is it not to the mercies of the eyes of others that we commit ourselves on our journey through the world?”
― Angela Carter, Nights at the Circus

“I wanted to be seen, but I didn't want to be watched.”
― Ashley C Ford, Somebody's Daughter: A Memoir

“You will never be lost to me, Selinne.”
― Emm Cole, Merminia

“I think about all the ways I’ve been perceived by others over the years: as a burden, a dutiful daughter, a girlfriend, a spiteful wretch, an invalidâ€�
This is my letter to the World that never wrote to Me.
“You showed what no one else could see,� I tell him.
He squeezes my shoulder. Both of us are silent, looking at the painting.
There she is, that girl, on a planet of grass. Her wants are simple: to tilt her face to the sun and feel its warmth. To clutch the earth beneath her fingers. To escape from and return to the house she was born in.
To see her life from a distance, as clear as a photograph, as mysterious as a fairy tale.
This is a girl who has lived through broken dreams and promises. Still lives. Will always live on that hillside, at the center of a world that unfolds all the way to the edges of the canvas. Her people are witches and persecutors, adventures and homebodies, dreamers and pragmatists. Her world is both circumscribed and boundless, a place where the stranger at the door may hold a key to the rest of her life.
What she most wants—what she most truly yearns for—is what any of us want: to be seen.
And look. She is.”
― Christina Baker Kline

“This part of the story is about the gaze and what it felt like in my body to look at someone who looked back at me, to see and be seen. All I wanted was to be seen.”
― Alisson Wood

“Your soul requires seeing. But it cannot be truly seen until you are willing to be vulnerable.”
― Lebo Grand

“It was not the thought of seeing God that upset her. It was the thought of being seen.”
― Timothy Findley, Not Wanted on the Voyage

“We remember the people who saw us when we couldn't really see ourselves.”
― Julie Lythcott-Haims, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult

“But he also wants that feeling he had earlier, that feeling of being seen for who he is, and of being liked anyway.”
― Cat Sebastian, You Should Be So Lucky

“Being seen burdens you with an image you have to maintain.”
― Taylor Adams, The Last Word

“Planet Earth has an environmental radiation alarm system. When the auroras are being seen in places they do not normally occur, the radiation levels are abnormally high!”
― Steven Magee

“Being seen is about simply existing in your truth and allowing others to witness that without attempting to hide, diminish, or justify yourself. When we allow someone to truly see us, we invite a deeper, more authentic connection.”
― Celeste Larsen, Heal the Witch Wound: Reclaim Your Magic and Step Into Your Power

“It was more than happiness. More than affection or gratitude. It was something deeper. It was the sense of being seen and loved exactly for who he was.”
― Elise Broach, Masterpiece

“She let herself be seen clearly in the pretense and came through as more human for it.”
― Thomm Quackenbush, The Lifecycle of Suns

“Sitting cross-legged on the floor beside my window, I stared at the croissant on a napkin before me. I was torn with this choice, a simple one to most, but everything I was given by strangers seemed to mean far more to me than anything else.
It represented more than a kind gesture; it proved they could see me. Maybe it was due to pity, or it was just how they were to everyone, but the gesture meant so much I was scared to make it vanish by eating it.”
― Adam A. Fox, A Sinful Sacrifice

“I liked being at the party tonight. Despite all the fancy clothes and the Asteri and the stuff with Hypaxia and Celestina. Despite all the prince bullshit. I liked being seen. With you.”
― Sarah J. Maas, House of Sky and Breath

“The funny thing is, the more people I surround myself with, the lonelier I feel. I could be dancing in a sea of people and still be completely alone. You may be the very first person at one of these parties to see me.”
― M.A. Kuzniar, Upon a Frosted Star

“We all want to be listened to, to feel we matter. We want to be able to tell the story of our life without being interrupted, or judged, or asked to get to the point.”
― Richard Zimler, The Warsaw Anagrams

“So much of being adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our own feelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience.”
― Douglas Coupland, Girlfriend in a Coma