Vanishing Act Quotes & Sayings

Write from what you know into what you don't know. — Grace Paley

The greatest justification for travel is not self-improvement but rather performing a vanishing act, disappearing without a trace. — Paul Theroux

All morning I lay down sentences, erase them, and try new ones. Soon enough, when things go well, the world around me dwindles: the sky out the window, the furious calm of the big umbrella pine ten feet away, the smell of dust falling onto the hot bulb in the lamp. That's the miracle of writing, the place you try to find
when the room, your body, and even time itself cooperate in a vanishing act. — Anthony Doerr

(Mam) ignorant as a thistle, married to a drunk and pushing out baby after baby, each of which had to be clothed and fed until it grew up and left, or died. — Meg Rosoff

Fights with my father were really quite brutal. I would not live his vision. I would not become who he wanted me to be. Everything I did was criticized. I would spend three months drawing something and show him, and he would look up from his paper and just look back down. I got no approval from him for anything I did that was creative. — Kevyn Aucoin

Act! the wise are known by their actions; fame and immortality are ever their attendants. Mark with deeds the vanishing traces of swiftrolling time. Let us make happy the circle around us,
be useful as much as we may. For that fills up with soft rapture, that dissolves the dark clouds of the day! — Johann Gaudenz Von Salis-Seewis

I have a tendency to sabotage relationships; I have a tendency to sabotage everything. Fear of success, fear of failure, fear of being afraid. Useless, good-for-nothing thoughts. — Michael Buble

Failure is just success rounded down. — Ryan North

Across a world where all men grieve
And grieving strive the more,
The great days range like tides and leave
Our dead on every shore. — Rudyard Kipling

What is right, in the end, is not always what it seems to be, and some rules are better broken. — Jodi Picoult

There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power. — Alan Cohen

If I ever got sloppy and maudlin, it would be for the streets of my childhood - but no self- respecting writer should ever eulogize a slum ... — John Geddes

There's something to be said for being classically trained on piano, but not having your whole makeup be tied to one instrument. — Victoria Legrand

... it occurs to me how often laughter accompanies tears — David Arnold

So how do you know when you're a winner? Easy. It's when good is not good enough. — Cara Chow

Travel is a vanishing act, a solitary trip down a pinched line of geography to oblivion. — Paul Theroux

You can't exist in this world without leaving a piece of yourself behind. — Jodi Picoult

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets that everybody guesses. — George Bernard Shaw

He still wondered what it would be like to be so intriguing that people would actually care if he disappeared. — Adam Langer

I was in the situation of someone who has assumed, all his life, that madness was on eway, and suddenly in its grip, discovers that it is not only different from the way he'd imagined but that the person suffering from it is someone else, and that this someone else is not interested in finding out what madness is like: he is simply immersed in it, or it has descended on him, and that's that. — Felisberto Hernandez

Yet they sense that something is wrong. They can't quite put their finger on the problem. As time passes, they grow more and more dependent on each other; they are getting older; any opportunities to make a new life are vanishing fast. They try to keep busy doing reading or embroidery, watching television, seeing friends, but there is always the conversation over supper or after supper. He is easily irritated, she is more silent than usual. They can see that they are growing further and further apart, but cannot understand why. They reach the conclusion that this is what marriage is like, but won't talk to their friends about it; they are the image of the happy couple who support each other and share the same interests. She takes a lover, so does he, but it's never anything serious, of course. What is important, necessary, essential, is to act as if nothing is happening, because it's too late to change. — Paulo Coelho

If I were to select a jack-booted group of fascists who are perhaps as large a danger to American society as I could pick today, I would pick BATF [the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms]. — John Dingell

Time will solve all the problems Chinese school graduates face. In our bilingual society, there are no more Chinese school graduates, only English school graduates who can speak Mandarin. These English school graduates probably can also read and write Chinese, but they did not go to a Chinese school, and they act and think differently from us. Drawing a line between us, they would never say they graduated from a Chinese school, because former Chinese school graduates, that is, the vanishing group of people that includes us, are second-class citizens. They, on the other hand, belong to the first class, the Chinese elite, English school graduates who are fluent in Chinese. — Yeng Pway Ngon

Well, I'll just toss these cake samples if we're not going to use them," said Hermes, vanishing with the cakes.

"Apollo?" Hera clutched at his golden breastplate. "Apollo, we can still have a party, right? When was it going to be? I'll act surprised, I promise. I will!"

"Sorry, Hera...the fun just seems to have gone out of it now. — Carolyn Hennesy