Vanished Quotes

“You know what I always say—never let an asshole rent space in your head.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Inscribed on the back was a line from Virgil in Latin: Audentes fortuna juvat. Fortune favors the bold. He’d been bold all right, but Fortune hadn’t gotten the memo.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“A man’s most open actions have a secret side to them. —JOSEPH CONRAD”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Listen,” I said. “There was once this legendary French acrobat named Charles Blondin, okay? He was famous in the nineteenth century for doing these impossible daredevil tightrope-walking stunts. He strung a rope across Niagara Falls, a thousand feet long. And this crowd gathered and he walked on the tightrope over the falls, hundreds of feet above the gorge, and the crowd went crazy when he got to the other side, clapping and cheering.” Gabe gave me a skeptical glance. “Yeah?” “And then he said to the crowd, ‘Do you believe I can do it again?’ and the crowd cheered, ‘Yes!’ And he did it. And the crowd cheered even louder, and he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it wearing a blindfold?’ And some people in the crowd got scared and shouted, ‘No, don’t do it,’ and others said, ‘Yes! You can do it!’” “And he fell,” Gabe said. I shook my head. “He did it, and the crowd cheered even louder, and he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it on stilts this time?’ And the crowd shouted out, “Yes! You can do it!’ And he did it, and the crowd roared and got even wilder. So then he said, ‘Do you believe I can do it pushing a wheelbarrow along the rope?’ And the crowd roared and cheered and said, ‘Yes!’ And Blondin said, ‘You really think I can? You believe it?’ And they shouted, ‘Yes! Yes, you can!’ ” Despite himself, despite his teenage cynicism, he was actually listening. For a moment he almost seemed to be a child again, listening to a bedtime story. “Is this true?” “Yes.” “He actually did it?” “Yep. He did it. He walked across the tightrope hundreds of feet above the gorge pushing a wheelbarrow, and when he made it to the other side the audience had grown huge and frenzied and totally worked up and they cheered. Really went crazy. So Blondin said, ‘Do you believe I can do it again but this time pushing a man in this wheelbarrow?’ And the crowd roared and said, ‘Yes!’ He said, ‘You really believe I can do it?’ And they all went, ‘Yes, definitely! You can do it! We believe in you! Yes! Absolutely!’ By that time the crowd was completely behind him. They thought he could do anything. So Blondin said, ‘Then who will volunteer to sit in the wheelbarrow?’ And the crowd suddenly went quiet. Totally silent. And he said, ‘What’s the matter? You don’t believe in me anymore?’ And they were silent for a long time before someone from the crowd finally said, ‘Yes, we believe in you. But not that much.’ ” “Huh. Did anyone ever volunteer to get in the wheelbarrow?” I shrugged. “How’d the guy die?” “In bed. Forty years later. From diabetes.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Surely you know the Thirty-Six Stratagems.” I shook my head. “The ancient Chinese art of deception.” “Oh, right. Sun Tzu. Jay Stoddard’s favorite.” “Forget Sun Tzu’s Art of War. That’s so commonplace.” He held up a gnarled, age-spotted finger. “Far more interesting than Sun Tzu is Chu-ko Liang. Perhaps the most brilliant military strategist ever. One of his stratagems was to defeat your enemy from within. Infiltrate the enemy’s camp in the guise of cooperation or surrender. Then, once you’ve discovered the source of his weakness, you strike.” Somehow the setting—the visitors’ room of the Altamont Correctional Facility—made my father’s advice a little less authoritative. As I walked out of the visitors’ room, I savored a feeling of relief. Because at that moment I knew that my brother was alive.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“He glanced at me, then chuckled. “Sprezzatura’s an Italian word. Means the art of making something difficult look easy.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Mrs. Heller, I’m Dr. Yurovsky. Can you hear me?” Lauren considered replying, then decided not to bother. Too much effort. The words weren’t coming out the way she wanted. “Mrs. Heller, if you can hear me, I’d like you to wiggle your right thumb.” That she definitely didn’t feel like doing. She blinked a few times, which cleared her vision a little. Finally, she was able to see a man with a tall forehead and long chin, elongated like the man in the moon. Or like a horse. The face came slowly into focus, as if someone were turning a knob. A hooked nose, receding hair. His face was tipped in toward hers. He wore a look of intent concern. She wiggled her right thumb.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“The rain was pattering hypnotically on the plane’s exterior.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Behind every great fortune lies a great crime.   —HONORÉ DE BALZAC”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Sprezzatura’s an Italian word. Means the art of making something difficult look easy.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“never let an asshole rent space in your head.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“You know what I always say—never let an asshole rent space in your head.” He”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Surely you know the Thirty-Six Stratagems.” I shook my head. “The ancient Chinese art of deception.” “Oh, right. Sun Tzu. Jay Stoddard’s favorite.” “Forget Sun Tzu’s Art of War. That’s so commonplace.” He held up a gnarled, age-spotted finger. “Far more interesting than Sun Tzu is Chu-ko Liang. Perhaps the most brilliant military strategist ever. One of his stratagems was to defeat your enemy from within. Infiltrate the enemy’s camp in the guise of cooperation or surrender. Then, once you’ve discovered the source of his weakness, you strike.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Okay, okay,” I said. I should have known better than to talk comic books with Gabe. “What I’m trying to tell you is, the right thing isn’t always the easy thing.” “Do I get a cookie with that fortune?” “You might want to watch the way you talk to your elders,” I said sternly. “Yeah, right,” he said, and he smiled, and I smiled, too.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“There was a time, not so long ago, when private military contractors were outside the law, you know.” “Above the law.” “No. Outside the law. We weren’t covered by military law, and we weren’t covered by civilian law.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“The Special Forces motto was “De Oppresso Liber,” not “Libre.” Which meant “To liberate the oppressed.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“As far as I could see, there weren’t any fiber-optic sensors buried in the ground next to the perimeter fence. That would have been outrageously costly. Unnecessary, too. Instead, the facility was protected by a twelve-foot chain-link fence, six-gauge galvanized steel—extremely difficult to cut through—and topped by coils of razor wire.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Then I reached the second building and saw the conflagration. A bonfire twenty feet high. The wreck of a Hummer, its carcass barely visible behind the veil of flame.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Heller,” he called after me. “I don’t know what you have up your sleeve, but I suggest you not bother. Like Sun Tzu said: ‘All battles are won or lost before they’re fought.’ ” “He never said it,” I pointed out. “That’s from the movie Wall Street.” “Doesn’t make it wrong.” “Well,” I said. “I guess we’ll see.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Heller,” he called after me. “I don’t know what you have up your sleeve, but I suggest you not bother. Like Sun Tzu said: ‘All battles are won or lost before they’re fought.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“The most I could do was to mull over several different hypotheses. Think them through, turn them over and over and try to calculate which one was the most likely. What I eventually settled on was something like this: my ever-scheming, ever-dissatisfied, megalomaniacal brother had finally discovered a way out of his middle-class purgatory. After his company, Gifford Industries, had secretly acquired Paladin Worldwide, he’d combed through Paladin’s financial records, come across evidence of some mammoth kickback scheme, and made the brazen error of trying to extort millions of dollars from Carl Koblenz, Paladin’s president. But instead of simply buying Roger’s silence, Paladin had come right back at him. Threatened him. Targeted him. Then, one night in Georgetown, grabbed him. After that, well, my hypothesis got even shakier. Had he managed to escape his abductors? That seemed awfully unlikely. Roger was no super-hero. Was he being held prisoner at the Paladin training facility in Georgia in such a lax, loose way that he was actually able to use a cell phone? That was only marginally more likely.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“There is nothing we fear so much as the unknown, and the Surgeon was not going to enlighten her.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“She opened the aluminum screen door and shook his hand. Something about his unhandsome face made him seem trustworthy.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Crap,” he said. “Now we have to wait five minutes.” “No. Try spiking the solenoid.” He shrugged, gave me a dyspeptic scowl, and twisted the keypad off the safe door. It’s meant to be easily removed, so you can change the battery. He pushed on a couple of clips, releasing a plastic cover, then pulled out the black rubber membrane. This exposed a circuit board and a row of eight tiny metal posts.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“You said electronic lock. I didn’t know it was a TL-30X6.” “I don’t like your tone, Merlin. You sound very pessimistic. Maybe even defeatist.” “Heller, listen to me. I brought my StrongArm safe cracker diamond-core drill bits, okay? But drilling through one of these, that’s a five-hour job at least. That mother’s made from inch-and-a-half-thick steel and cobalt-carbide matrix hardplate, okay?” “If you say so.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“Here’s the thing about close combat in real life: It’s almost always over in a matter of seconds. Not like in the movies, where your hero has the luxury to strategize and maneuver and grapple for minutes on end. Fortunately, when your life is in danger, your brain kicks in. Deep inside your brain this little almond-shaped gland called the amygdala sends out the signal to make your body start pumping out dopamine and adrenaline and cortisol. Time seems to slow, your focus sharpens, you suddenly start perceiving way more stimuli than normal. Neurologists call this tachypsychia. Everyone else calls it the fight-or-flight response. Cavemen who didn’t have it got eaten by saber-toothed tigers. So I made a quick decision. I could either be incapacitated by a Taser, or I could put myself within the reach of Bondarchuk’s fists. No choice.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“I shrugged, put my hands up, and turned around, my back to Taylor. Bondarchuk scuffed into an orthogonal position to my left, just far enough away that I couldn’t jump him.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“I opened the car door; then, just to be thorough, I got out and knelt in front of the bumper. And found it, magnetically affixed to the back of the license plate. I pulled it off: a miniature GPS tracking device. A box about three inches by one containing a GPS receiver and a cellular modem. That little toy could transmit a vehicle’s location over a cell-phone network.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“I had to assume, of course, that every word Koblenz had told me, including “and” and “the,” was a lie. That was a given. But I operated on that assumption most of the time anyway: Washington, D.C., is to lying what Hershey, Pennsylvania, is to chocolate.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished

“What does that look like to you?” he said. “A forgery.” He shrugged, snorted quietly. “That’s right, Heller. We have teams of forgers at work creating phony documents just for you.” His sarcasm was subtle. “Now do you see? Starting to recognize your brother’s modus operandi? Steal a bunch of money, then, when you realize that you’ve messed with the wrong guys, do the cowardly thing and run? Wonder where he got that from.” “Screw you.” I no longer felt bad about making up that story about his cigars. “Oh, believe me, it’s the truth. Maybe to Victor Heller’s sons that’s nothing more than loose change you find under your sofa cushions. But not to me. And certainly not to Allen Granger.”
― Joseph Finder, Vanished