Disappeared Quotes & Sayings

Totalitarian politics - far from being simply antisemitic or racist or imperialist or communist - use and abuse their own ideological and political elements until the basis of factual reality, from which the ideologies originally derived their strength and their propaganda value - the reality of class struggle, for instance, or the interest conflicts between Jews and their neighbors - have all but disappeared. — Hannah Arendt

My pleasures disappeared with my vices. — Hanif Kureishi

Someone should write an erudite essay on the moral, physical, and esthetic effect of the Model T Ford on the American nation. Two generations of Americans knew more about the Ford coil than the clitoris, about the planetary system of gears than the solar system of stars. With the Model T, part of the concept of private property disappeared. Pliers ceased to be privately owned and a tire pump belonged to the last man who had picked it up. Most of the babies of the period were conceived in Model T Fords and not a few were born in them. The theory of the Anglo Saxon home became so warped that it never quite recovered. — John Steinbeck

We the survivors are not the true witnesses. The true witnesses, those in possession of the unspeakable truth are the drowned, the dead, the disappeared. — Primo Levi

The human mind is a product of the Pleistocene age, shaped by wildness that has all but disappeared. If we complete the destruction of nature, we will have succeeded in cutting ourselves off from the source of sanity itself. Hermetically sealed amidst our creations and bereft of those of the
Creation, the world then will reflect only the demented image of the mind imprisoned within itself. Can the mind doting on itself and its creations be sane? — Edward O. Wilson

I climbed aboard a Greyhound bus and rode it to New York without telling anyone, without so much as a goodbye. What was I thinking? I wasn't. I was young and stupid and broken. I knew from watching movies that broken people hopped on buses and disappeared. New York seemed far away, geographically, mentally. — Ken Wheaton

There it was again - the perverse refusal to acknowledge my hostility. She seemed to me like some magical lake in a fairy tale: nothing could disturb the mirror-calm of her surface. My snide comments and bitter jokes disappeared soundlessly into her depths, leaving not so much as a ripple. — Zoe Heller

There is, following an ample meal, a sort of pause in time, filled with a gentle slackening of thought and energy, when to sit doing nothing gives us a sense of life's richness and a feeling that the least effort would be intolerable. The melancholy we took with us to table has disappeared and, if we think of it at all it is only to smile, as at some black mood now past, its cause having gone. And with the melancholy, all scruple, all remorse departs from us. — Marcel Proust

A woman calls from Seaview to say her linen closet is missing. Last September, her house had six bedrooms, two linen closets. She's sure of it. Now she's only got one. She comes to open her beach house for the summer. She drives out from the city with the kids and the nanny and the dog, and here they are with all heir luggage, and their towels are gone. Disappeared. Poof.
Bermuda triangulated. — Chuck Palahniuk

Absence is worse than death. If you suddenly disappeared without a trace, it's like you had never lived. — Vaddey Ratner

After one month with a saxophone shoved in my mouth, my military combatant's enthusiasm disappeared completely. Instead of flying choppers behind enemy lines, I started to fantasise about living in New York, London or Paris. — Gilad Atzmon

On January 3, 1992, a meeting of Russian and American scholars took place in the auditorium of a government building in Moscow. Two weeks earlier the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and the Russian Federation had become an independent country. As a result, the statue of Lenin which previously graced the stage of the auditorium had disappeared and instead the flag of the Russian Federation was now displayed on the front wall. The only problem, one American observed, was that the flag had been hung upside down. — Samuel P. Huntington

Because we have sought to cover up past evil, though it still persists, we have been powerless to check the new evil of today.Evil unchecked grows, Evil tolerated poisons the whole system. And because we have tolerated our past and present evils, international affairs are poisoned and law and justice have disappeared from them. — Jawaharlal Nehru

If your company disappeared, would it leave a gaping hole that could not easily be filled by any other enterprise on the planet? — James C. Collins

I learn from him around the campfire that he and the Howlers, Thistle, Screwface, Clown, Weed, and Pebble - the dregs of my old House - stayed no longer than a day after I disappeared. — Pierce Brown

I know. But with some people-most people, really- i just fade into the background. If i disappeared one day, really disappeared and never came back, they wouldn't even notice. — Cynthia Hand

In 1600 the specialization of games and pastimes did not extend beyond infancy; after the age of three or four it decreased and disappeared. From then on the child played the same games as the adult, either with other children or with adults ... Conversely, adults used to play games which today only children play. — Philippe Aries

Drumming completely eclipsed my life from age 13, when I started drum lessons. Everything disappeared. I'd done well in school up until that time. I was fairly adjusted socially up until that time. And I became completely monomania, obsessed all through my teens. Nothing else existed anymore. — Neil Peart

It's not all bad. Heightened self-consciousness, apartness, an inability to join in, physical shame and self-loathing - they are not all bad. Those devils have been my angels. Without them I would never have disappeared into language, literature, the mind, laughter and all the mad intensities that made and unmade me. — Stephen Fry

Before they disappeared into the night, Bella said, 'Why do you think anyone wants to conquer someone else?'
I don't know.'
Really not?'
Maybe to discover that person's secret.'
And then what?'
Then it's been discovered.'
Or not.'
Well, then you have to conquer that person again.'
Again and again,' she said. 'Every day, every night. — Maxim Biller

Letter 1
To the princess of the elephants,
I disappeared exactly one year ago. On that day I received a letter. It called me back to the place where my life with the elephants began
Please forgive me, for the silence between us has been unbroken for one year.
I will never be more of myself than in these letters.
They are my maps of the bird path, and they are all that I know to be true. — Gregory Colbert

Grown-ups aren't supposed to talk about "best friends," but he was among my closest and certainly my most constant friend from then until we were well into our thirties, when he inexplicably disappeared on me. I don't mean he fled the country or changed his identity or got abducted; the last I heard he was still living in Baltimore. He just stopped returning my calls. It took me almost a year of leaving messages on his answering machine to get the hint. It took me much longer to understand that I was never going to know what had happened. — Tim Kreider

Music was the one thing I could control. It was the one world that offered me freedom. When I played music, my nightmares ended. My family problems disappeared. I didnt have to search for answers. The answers lay no further than the bell of my trumpet and my scrawled, pencilled scores. Music made me full, strong, popular, self-reliant and cool. — Quincy Jones

Leif gripped Benny's shoulders to hold him back, but he broke free and chased the truck, pumping his tiny arms and legs with great furry.
"I love you!" he called out, when he was just ten feet away. I gripped the metal bars, my throat choked with emotion.
"I love you!" Silas cried, as he followed.
They both kept after us, sprinting wildly behind the cage. I watched their mouths moving, saying those words over and again, as the truck bounded through the woods and their small bodies disappeared, unreachable, behind the trees. — Anna Carey

Wherever applause breaks out in the liturgy because of some human achievement, it is a sure sign that the essence of liturgy has totally disappeared and been replaced by a kind of religious entertainment. Such attraction fades quickly - it cannot compete in the market of leisure pursuits, incorporating as it increasingly does various forms of religious titillation. — Pope Benedict XVI

By then it was more of an observation than a decision; it was less a matter of abandoning the faith than waking up to the fact that it had disappeared, quietly leaked away, as if there had been a small hole in my tank all along. — Philip Stewart

In 2001, the oil companies, the war contractors and the Neo-Con-Artists seized the economy and added $4 trillion of unproductive spending to the national debt. We now pay four times more for defence, three times more for gasoline and home-heating oil and twice what we payed for health-care. Millions of Americans have lost their jobs, their homes, their health-care, their pensions; trillions of dollars for an unnecessary war payed for with borrowed money. Tens of billions of dollars in cash and weapons disappeared into thin air at the cost of the lives of our troops and innocent Iraqis, while all the President's oil men are maneuvering on Iraq's oil. Borrowed money to bomb bridges in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. No money to rebuild bridges in America. Borrowed money to start a hot war with Iran, now we have another cold war with Russia and the American economy has become a game of Russian roulette. — Dennis Kucinich

History tells us that six million Jews disappeared during that war. If there was no Holocaust, where did they go?' She shakes her head. 'All of that, and the world didn't learn anything. Look around. There's still ethnic cleansing. There's discrimination. — Jodi Picoult

We have laws in our country that tell us not to murder or steal and we have police that enforce them. The question is whether you personally need the police to watch you. If they disappeared would you begin killing and thieving because you know no one will come after you, or will you carry on not doing it because it is what you actually believe is right? — Lewis N. Roe

Whenever I saw a sunset, I would quietly make my secret wish right before the sun tucked under the western horizon and disappeared. It would seem as if the sun had taken my wish with it. I'd make it right before the last speck of light vanished. — Michael Jackson

This is the real and the only reason for friendship: to provide a mirror so the other person can contemplate his image from the past, which, without the eternal blah-blah of memories between pals, would long ago have disappeared. — Milan Kundera

But I was also free, invisible, as if the only evidence of my existence were in the tasks I performed, the services I rendered to others. When I stopped work, I disappeared. — Rosemary Poole-Carter

It's amazing to realize that a lot of the insecurities I had when I was younger have pretty much disappeared. — Kristen Stewart

I only have one story now.
The story was heroin. It was made out of sensation, not words; it was invisible and murderous and unstoppable. Sam disappeared from her slowly, like a snowman melting, until all Blanca had left of him was a pool of freezing-cold blue water, arctic cold, sorrow colored, evaporating with every year. She did her best to hold onto him, but it was impossible, like carrying ice into the desert or making time stand still. After the final fight when Sam moved out, Blanca saw him less and less often. He no longer had a presence; he was like the outline of a person, an absence rather than a full-fledged human being. — Alice Hoffman

Nearly every historic fruit and vegetable variety once found in the United States has disappeared. — Preeti Simran Sethi

This place might have been paradise, a treasure trove far greater than any to be found in a pirate yarn.
Everywhere he looked there were books.
They rose into the air in majestic columns, stacks and stacks of them forming a maze that seemed to stretch to forever; the stacks rose high into the air and disappeared towards the unseen ceiling. The air had the overwhelming smell of old books, of polished leather, and yellowing leaves, like the smell of a bookshop or a public library magnified a thousand-fold. — Lavie Tidhar

Take it from me: love has all the lasting permanence of a rainbow- beautiful while it's there, and just as likely to have disappeared by the time you blink. — Jodi Picoult

When I read that Malaysia Airlines flight MH370 had disappeared - a state-of-the-art Boeing 777, said to be an incredibly safe way to travel - I waited patiently for the chance to learn what happened. — Henry Rollins

The ideal community, in a sense, would be the loose, fluid aggregation of individuals who elected to be alone and detached in order to be at one with themselves and all that lives and breathes. It would be a God-filled community, even if none of its members believe in (a) God. It would be a paradise, even though the word had long disappeared from our vocabulary. — Henry Miller

Somehow, I cannot see anyone describing me as gracious, loving, and happy." He frowned at his sandwich as if in puzzlement. "You are loving," Anna replied staunchly, though she hadn't exactly planned for those words to leave her mouth. "Now that is beyond surprising." The earl eyed her in the deepening shadows. "How do you conclude such a thing, Mrs. Seaton?" "You have endless patience with your family, my lord," she began. "You escort your sisters everywhere; you dance attendance on them and their hordes of friends at every proper function; you harry and hound the duke so his wild starts are not the ruination of his duchy. You force yourself to tend to mountains of business which you do not enjoy, so your family may be safe and secure all their days." "That is business," the earl said, looking nonplussed that his first sandwich had disappeared, until Anna handed him a second. — Grace Burrowes

Do you think it interests me that this painting represents two figures? These two figures existed, they exist no more. The sight of them gave me an initial emotion, little by little their real presence grew indistinct. They became a fiction for me, then they disappeared, or rather, were turned into problems of all kinds. For me they are no longer two figures but shapes and colours. Don't misunderstand me: shapes and colours, though, that sum up the idea of the two figures and preserve the vibration of their existence. — Pablo Picasso

You want to know what I want? I'll tell you what I want. I want back what Bobby Fischer took with him when he disappeared. — Ben Kingsley

A woman with long, blonde hair stood for a moment on the other side of the door. She looked similar to his date. Was she entering or leaving the coffee house?
Before Paul could confirm her identity or stand and run after her, she strode away and disappeared in the crowd. — Cheryl Sterling

without warning, the thermometer disappeared from my fingers. Some sudden suction had drawn it inside the cow. I ran my fingers round just inside the rectum - nothing; I pushed my hand inside without success; with a feeling of rising panic I rolled up my sleeve and groped about in vain. — James Herriot

In England, it's now Sir Ben. Mister has just disappeared. It's not even on my passport anymore. They've taken Mister away from me. — Ben Kingsley

The guys who won World War II and that whole generation have disappeared, and now we have a bunch of teenage twits. — Clint Eastwood

The whole art of allowing the truth to take possession of you is of being vulnerable, of being open, of being in a let-go. Or in other words, the whole art consists of one word, "surrender". And that's what sannyas is, that's my definition of a sannyasin: a man who is surrendered to existence so totally that he never thinks in terms of achievement any more, because he is no more. Who is there to achieve? - he has disappeared totally, he has not left even a trace behind. In that very moment, when you are just a pure nothingness, truth arrives. It is a gift of God. — Rajneesh

To this day, I am amazed at how many of my problems - most of which had nothing to do with drinking, I believed - have become manageable or have simply disappeared since I quit drinking. — Alcoholics Anonymous

I was still an avid reader of Mills & Boon romances - on publication day, I used to rush out of work to get to the local book store to grab my favourites before they all disappeared. — Penny Jordan

As he lowered his lips to mine - slowly, this time - I let my eyes flutter closed. And at the first touch of his mouth, all my nervousness magically disappeared. He felt wonderful. Amazing. Impossibly fabulous. Without even thinking about it, I slid my hands up his shoulders, and at the same time I felt his arms come around my waist. His lips were firm, warm . . . perfect. I thought I might just die from happiness. Even though it was about five times longer than our first kiss, it was still over way too soon. With obvious reluctance, he pulled away, then planted one last feather-light kiss on the corner of my mouth before straightening up. "If I don't have the best game of my life now, it'll be a miracle. — Brenda Hiatt

I'd like to do a song that I wrote today about our government's increasing infringement on our right to privacy, but the lyrics mysteriously disappeared from my guitar case. — Dan Piraro

For nomadic societies, there was no point in owning anything that one could not carry, but once humans settled down and developed a system of money, that limit to acquisition disappeared. — Peter Singer

Modern history is, as you all know, full of examples of great movements that disappeared because they had ceased to have any genuine reason for existence. The important thing is to have a faith to live by, and that goes for us in this party. — Robert Menzies

She suddenly thought one afternoon, when looking in the glass at her fairness, that there was yet another date, of greater importance to her than those; that of her own death, when all these charms would have disappeared; a day which lay sly and unseen and among all the other days of the year, giving no sign or sound when she annually passed over it; but not the less surely there. When was it? Why did she not feel the chill of each yearly encounter with such a cold relation? — Thomas Hardy

In my second year of Harvard Divinity School, where I was studying to be a minister like my father, I met a guy named Robert Cox, who had been the editor of the Buenos Aires Herald during the Dirty War in Argentina. Bob used to print the names of those who had been disappeared the day before, above the fold in his newspaper. It was a kind of an awakening to me to see what great journalism can and should do. — Chris Hedges

And she leaves. She opens the door and, without a backward glance, goes out and shuts the door. I stand at the window and watch her go. She vanishes in the shadow of a building. Hands resting on the sill, I gaze for the longest time at where she disappeared. Maybe she forgot something she wanted to say and will come back. But she never does. All that's left is an absence that's like a hollow space. — Haruki Murakami

I built the solenoid and with great expectations late one evening I pressed the switch which sent a current of 40 amperes through the coil. The result was spectacular-a deafening explosion, the apparatus disappeared, all windows were blown in or out, a wall caved in, and thus ended my pioneering experiment on liquid hydrogen cooled coils! — Nicholas Kurti

All the great coincidences and marvelous achievements of his life disappeared in a flash. In their place were puppet strings. 'A — Hugh Howey

Suddenly, the shadow disappeared through the wall!
Maybe the shadow disappeared again.Can we please go back home now?I really don't like it here & I'm scared! Julia pleaded.
The shadow was standing by a very small cage, pointing its long, thin finger towards the floor. — Magda M. Olchawska

A few years after you disappeared, a postal worker named Ben Carver was sentenced to death for murdering six young men. (He is a homosexual, which, according to Huckleberry, means he is not attracted to murdering young women.) Rumors have it that Carver cannibalized some of his victims, but there was never a trial, so the more salacious details were not made public. I found Carver's name in the sheriff's file ten months ago, the fifth anniversary of your disappearance. The letter was written on Georgia Department of Corrections stationery and signed by the warden. He was informing the sheriff that Ben Carver, a death row inmate, had mentioned to one of the prison guards that he might have some information pertaining to your disappearance. — Karin Slaughter

Joseph, you're out of clean towels." Lucia poked her head into the living room, the rest of her hidden behind the wall. Her red hair dripped water onto my wooden floors.
"She's in the buff." Jenna guffawed. Gabriella rolled her eyes, beaming.
I rose. "Go back to the bathroom. I'll bring you a towel," I ordered Lucia. She disappeared down the hall.
"You have naked angels running around your house," Jenna continued through her laughter. Gabby laughed louder. — Laura Kreitzer

The woman rolled her eyes. "DarkRiver males are damn possessive and complete exhibitionists during the mating dance."
Sascha ran through her dictionary of changeling terminology and could find no fit. "Mating dance?"
Mercy whistled. Dorian winced. Tamsyn suddenly got interested in her dough. Clay and Vaughn mysteriously disappeared. Behind her, Lucas's body was a hard wall of heat. "I think we need to discuss this upstairs. — Nalini Singh

By the time I began college, anxiety about hell had disappeared - not because I was confident that I was "saved," but because the whole package had become sufficiently uncertain that I didn't worry about it. — Marcus J. Borg

Old timidity has disappeared, and is replaced by silent, quaint fun, with which his face twinkles all over, as he listens. — Thomas Hughes

Why?" His question was almost buried by my heavy breathing.
I think I understood the question now. I could only hope I had the right answer. If there was one.
"Because I want to trust, be trusted. I want someone I can count on, someone who can count on me. I want somewhere safe. I want a home. But that can only happen if I'm with you."
"I'm never going to be like other men, Grant."
I wasn't sure what he meant until I turned enough to see his expression. The knowledge in his eyes spoke of those places he looked into. The windows or portals he disappeared into when he followed the light.
"I can give you what I have, but I can never give you everything." It wasn't Morgan didn't want to, he couldn't. I could see that too. He could never give me all of himself because he didn't control everything he had.
Could I live with that? — Adrienne Wilder

Oh, he'd be back all right! Giving her the last laugh before she moved out. And that was why she hadn't moved out yet. Just knowing she could, anytime she wanted to, made all the difference, of course. She'd just wait for him to succumb one more time, that was all. One more time
proving to him that he still wanted her before she disappeared out of his life for good. — Rosemary Rogers

The memory of an absent being kindles in the darkness of the heart; the more it has disappeared, the more it beams; the gloomy and despairing soul sees this light on its horizon; the star of the inner night. — Victor Hugo

Eve returned to her lip-gloss application. "Biology. Ms Whittier," she said, not bothering to look at Luke.
"Cool. Me too. Can I borrow that?" He reached around her and plucked her lip glaze out of her fingers. She still held the wand.
He held out his hand for it.
"What? No," Eve said.
"Come on, it's my first day. I want to make a good impression. And clearly biology can't be understood without lipstick," Luke joked.
"Funny." Eve grabbed the lip glaze back. "This stuff is really good for you."
Luke raised his eyebrows. They disappeared into his floppy blond hair. He didn't have expressive dark brows like Mal.
"It has green tea antioxidants," Eve continued. "And macadamia extract and aloe vera for healing."
"Oh. That's different then," Luke said. "Carry on. — Amy Meredith

Then there was the gray of human habitation. The blue places were turning brown, the yellow places to dust, the green places to smoke and ashes. Each time one of the animals disappeared
they went by species or sometimes by organizations of species, interconnected
it was as though all mountains were gone, or all lakes. A certain form of the world. But in the gray that metastasized over continents and hemispheres few appeared to be deterred by this extinguishing or even to speak of it, no one outside fringe elements and elite groups, professors and hippies, small populations of little general importance. The quiet mass disappearance, the inversion of the Ark, was passing unnoticed. — Lydia Millet

Today as in the time of Pliny and Columella, the hyacinth flourishes in Wales, the periwinkle in Illyria, the daisy on the ruins of Numantia; while around them cities have changed their masters and their names, collided and smashed, disappeared into nothingness, their peaceful generations have crossed down the ages as fresh and smiling as on the days of battle. — Edgar Quinet

For two years, she and Cassie had been inseparable. And then one night, Cassie had disappeared from her bed. In her place, her abductor had left his calling card, a macabre nursery rhyme. Cassie had never come home. — Elizabeth Heiter

I like your ... outfit." His eyes took in the naked flesh that was visible below the edge of the shirttail.
"I like your outfit too. You're looking awfully casual this morning, Professor."
He leaned forward and gave her a heated look. "Miss Mitchell, you're lucky I decided to put on any clothes at all." He chuckled at her fierce blush and disappeared into the kitchen.
Oh, gods of all virgins who are planning to have sex with their sex-god (no blasphemy intended) boyfriends, please don't let me spontaneously combust when he finally takes me to bed. I really need a Gabriel-induced orgasm, especially after last night. Please. Please. Pretty please ... — Sylvain Reynard

When she fell asleep, she dreamed of death
not just for her, not just for her species, but for every living thing she had ever known. The earth was flat and brown, a field of dirt as barren as the moon, a single road stretching in the distance. the last to fall were the buildings, distant and solemn, the gravestones for an entire world. Then they disappeared, and there was nothing left but nothing. — Dan Wells

I think you just complimented me," said Jane. "You should take better care next time."
The music had started, the couples had begun a promenade, but Mr. Nobley paused to hold Jane's arm and whisper, "Jane Erstwhile, if I never had to speak with another human being but you, I would die a happy man. I would that these people, the music, the food and foolishness all disappeared and left us alone. I would never tire of looking at you or listening to you." He took a breath. "There. That compliment was on purpose. I swear I will never idly compliment you again."
Jane's mouth was dry. All she could think to say was, "But ... but surely you wouldn't banish all the food."
He considered, then nodded once. "Right. We will keep the food. We will have a picnic."
And he spun her into the middle of the dance. — Shannon Hale

Oh, my little sister. What have you done?" "What?" I asked innocently. "It seems that something of great value to the Scholar has disappeared. At exactly the same time you did. He and the Chancellor have turned the citadelle upside down looking for it. All surreptitiously of course, because whatever was taken apparently isn't a catalogued piece of the royal collection. At least that's the rumor among the servants." I pressed my hands together and grinned. I couldn't hide my glee. Oh, how I wish I had seen the Scholar's face when he opened what he thought was his secret drawer and found it empty. Almost empty, that is. I'd left a little something for him. — Mary E. Pearson

And like all things, the problems disappeared. The challenges, goals and ambitions melted into folly and the reasons for all things homogenized into us and the enchantment of coffee-flavored kisses on a bright and promising morning became our religion, hope, destiny and dream. And it was beautiful then . . . . in a two room flat in the Alps of a city where love once lived. — David Ellsworth

Now what was tiring had disappeared and only the beauty remained.
Saturday found him for the first time strolling alone through Zurich, breathing in the heady smell of his freedom. New adventures hid around each corner. The future was again a secret. — Milan Kundera

Buddhas can take you to the boundary line of meditation and samadhi. That is the only difference between meditation and samadhi. If your mind has become utterly quiet and silent, but only the master is there, then it is meditation. If your mind has become so quiet that even the master has disappeared, it is samadhi. The last barrier is going to be the master. He will take you out of the world, but one day you will have to leave him too. And the real master will always keep you alert that you have to leave him one day, at the final stage. — Rajneesh

they'd come. As his taillights disappeared through the pine forest, a horrible feeling that she was losing the rest of her make-shift family washed over her. Chapter Ten The hours of driving hadn't cooled Kong's blood. His rage hadn't lessened. He hadn't wised up or conjured second thoughts on the revenge he would take. Hours of driving had only given him purpose and allowed him to calculate exactly what it was he was doing by going after Rhett. His people had gone too far, and now Kong would make his stand. He'd rebelled in his youth when he was — T.S. Joyce

In years to come cities will stretch out horizontally and will be non-urban (Los Angeles). After that, they will bury themselves in the ground and will no longer have names. Everything will become infrastructure bathed in artificial light and energy. The brilliant superstructure, the crazy verticality will have disappeared. New York is the final fling of this baroque verticality, this centrifugal excentricity, before the horizontal dismantling arrives, and the subterranean implosion that will follow. — Jean Baudrillard

Eighty percent of the problems that beset unification immediately disappeared when the President signed the bill increasing the authority and the responsibility of the Secretary of Defense. — Louis A. Johnson

Disappeared like fog in a stiff morning breeze, teen revilers when a squad car creeps up the driveway, roaches when the kitchen light comes on. — Dennis Vickers

The candle burns not for us, but for all those whom we failed to rescue from prison, who were shot on the way to prison, who were tortured, who were kidnapped, who 'disappeared'. That's what the candle is for. — Peter Benenson

I can't take this kind of suspense. Decide now." He untied the ropes around her wrists. "Walk out the door. In a year you'll be free of any entanglements with me. Or stay and be my wife. My real wife. Make your choice."
She looked down at the loosened ropes still wrapped around her, then up at him.
He wore an expression of fierce indifference, but she knew better. This proud man, this noble marquees, had made up his mind he wished to marry her without knowing who she was or what she'd done. She would guess the decision was his first impetuous gesture since the day his mother had disappeared.
Amy couldn't fool herself. For him to go so contrary to his own nature, he must feel an overwhelming emotion for her. — Christina Dodd

Viktor had been very sad about their grandfather's death, but Flora had intuited that it was less the person he grieved for than the fact of death itself. Death meant that people actually disappeared. That everyone was going to disappear — John Ajvide Lindqvist

Raimon was amused to see that the countess Carenza grew more beautiful by the day: her expression has softened and the pouches under her eyes had disappeared. She carried herself confidently, secure in the knowledge that she was fascinating to one pair of eyes at least. — Lisa Goldstein

Dawn was close. The weaker stars had already disappeared, and even the brightest were uncertain of themselves. — Clive Barker

Dear Artie: "The young fellow has disappeared into a dead end. I think the long-necked bastard planned to wind up in Paris and sent him there but he may also have used the underground railroad. Ask your round-heeled contact. Maybe you can find more than I could. "Roy — John Pearce

He cut her off with brutal precision. "And one last thing." His eyes
flicked toward the door, through which Jace, Alec, and Isabelle had
disappeared. "Keep in mind that when your mother fled from the Shadow World, it wasn't the monsters she was hiding from. Not the warlocks, the wolf-men, the Fair Folk, not even the demons themselves. It was them. It was the Shadowhunters. — Cassandra Clare

Her type of woman has disappeared in this country today: free, brash, disobedient, aware of their body as a gift, not as a sin or a shame. The only time I saw a cold shadow come over her was when she told me about her domineering, polygamous father, whose lecherous eyes stirred up doubt and panic in her. Books delivered her from her family and offered her a pretext for getting away from Constantine; as soon as she could, she'd enrolled in the University of Algiers. — Kamel Daoud

More African American adults are under correctional control today - in prison or jail, on probation or parole - than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.7 The mass incarceration of people of color is a big part of the reason that a black child born today is less likely to be raised by both parents than a black child born during slavery.8 The absence of black fathers from families across America is not simply a function of laziness, immaturity, or too much time watching Sports Center. Thousands of black men have disappeared into prisons and jails, locked away for drug crimes that are largely ignored when committed by whites. — Michelle Alexander

Servile labour disappeared because it could not stand the competition of free labour; its un-profitability sealed its doom in the market economy. — Ludwig Von Mises

Character, that subtle art, disappeared among them during those days and nights, existed only in a book or on a painted wall. — Michael Ondaatje

You have to hit it," she told herself. "This could be life or death." She positioned her rifle and made herself comfortable on the rock. Chief had disappeared. A hawk screed high overhead. She — Lauraine Snelling

When he nodded, the physician disappeared into thin air, and then a moment later, Payne felt a warm palm encompass hers. It was Vishous's un-gloved hand against her own and the connection between them eased her in ways she couldn't name. Verily, she had lost her mother ... but if she lived through this, she still had family. On this side. — J.R. Ward

Now listen," said Daniel gravely. "Just you listen to me and I'll tell you something worth remembering. When we're young we make our beds and when we're older we have to lie on them. I'd make myself a comfortable bed if I were you - straight and tidy with the blankets well tucked in at the foot - then it'll not come adrift when you lie in it. If a bed's not properly made at the start the blankets'll maybe fall off in the night and you'll wake up shivering." He nodded to Duggie in a friendly manner and away he went with his dog bounding gracefully beside him. Duggie watched him until he disappeared. Daniel — D.E. Stevenson

Outcast!" When he'd disappeared into the bushes, Juniper wiped her eyes. "I'm sorry, Percy. I didn't mean to get you involved. Leneus is still a lord of the Wild. You don't want to make an enemy of him." "No problem," I said. "I've got worse enemies than overweight satyrs." Nico walked back to us. "Good job, Percy. Judging from the trail of goat pellets, I'd say you shook him up pretty well. — Rick Riordan

The past never quite disappeared, did it? Folks usually thought time moved forward, starting on the left and riding a right-pointing arrow into the future. Ruby didn't believe that. The future twisted uncertain, a shapeless dream, but the past - the past was set. It cast evidence behind it, photos and letters and bones, piling up in hidden places, waiting for the chance to spill out. An avalanche. A burial. The past consumed the future, always. — Brandy Heineman

Keesha looked at me for a long time. "I did leave you alone. We all did. But you didn't get better. You didn't stop. You're still doin' all your weird shit. And I think it's time to stop."
"You think it's time to stop!" I exploded, and lunged at her with my hands outstretched. I pushed her real hard. She almost fell down. "I don't care what time you think it is!" I screamed. "Do you think I want to do this! Do you think I like it?"
"You pushed me!"
"Yeah. So what?"
"You're so afraid of being interrupted that you pushed me!"
"I'm not scared of being interrupted, you jerk! I'm ... I'm scared ... I'm scared of being." I crumpled into a ball and sat down where I was standing. I sat on a crack. Unevenly.
"Who are you anymore, Tara?"
Tears spilled over my frozen lashes and disappeared across my cheekbones. I had never felt so defeated. "I don't know. — Terry Spencer Hesser

A Japanese woman friend whose infant son died seven days into his life - no detectable reason - just the small breathing becoming nothing until it disappeared, told me that in Japan, there is a two-term word - "mizugo" - which translates loosely to "water children." Children who did not live long enough to enter the world as we live in it. In Japan, there are rituals for mothers and families, practices and prayers for the water children. There are shrines where a person can visit and deliver words and love and offerings to the water children. — Lidia Yuknavitch