Quotes About Presence

All the stuff we're so worried about creating and fixated on becoming is already right here, right now. The money you want already exists; the person you want to meet is already alive; the experience you want to have is available, now; the idea for that brilliant song you want to write is here, now, waiting for you to download the information. The knowledge and insight and joy and connection and love are all wagging their hands in your face, trying to get your attention.

I'm not sitting dwelling about the past or stressing or fretting about something in the future.

Hart was surprised how much Ian's silent presence comforted him. His volatile little brother, who'd needed so much help in the past, was now a rock in the roilling stream of Hart's world. I can always find you , Ian had told him once. He'd meant that he'd know when Hart needed him, would be there, no matter what.

I don't need the bowls to give me peace anymore," Ian said. "I have you. And Jamie, and Belle. If all the Ming bowls in the world were smashed, I'd still have you." [...] "You broke the bowl, and it is gone. But you are here, and whole. Nothing else matters.

You bring happiness with you." Angus smoothed her hair with a strong hand. "The house has been brighter all day, with you in it." ...Midnight Wolf, Epilogue, page 257.

He pulled her close. "Your being with me makes it stop. It's like the Ming bowls - when I touch them and feel them, everything stops. You are the same. That is why I brought you here, to keep you with me, where you can please make...everything...stop.

What did we do those days, stuck at home, my sons might someday ask. We lived or tolerated living. We looked away from death.

If you are not going to be a comfort, have the decency to be an empty space.

They leave things behind sometimes, the guests. A bottle of scent. A crumpled handkerchief. A pearl button that fell off a dress and rolled under a bed. And sometimes they leave other sorts of things. Things you can't see. A sigh trapped in a corner. Memories tangled in the curtains. A sob fluttering against the windowpane like a bird that flew in and can't get back out. I can feel these things. They dart and crouch and whisper.

You are a ghost, Andi," she says. "Almost gone." I look at her. I want to say something but I can't get the words out. She squeezes my hands. "Come back to us," she says. And she's gone.

You are a ghost. Almost gone. Come back to us.

I understand I can't have you. But I want to know you're in the world with me.

We wanted to enjoy the afterglow and we were trying our best to bond, but it was difficult with so many people between us, even though most of them were ghosts.

and it's all kind of moving and sweet except that you're not completely there—a part of you is a few feet away, or above, thinking

At night, the house thick with sleep, she would peer out her bedroom window at the trees and sky and feel the presence of a mystery. Some possibility that included her--separate from her present life and without its limitations. A secret. Riding in the car with her father, she would look out at other cars full of people she'd never seen, any one of whom she might someday meet and love, and would feel the world holding her making its secret plans.

How do you know a gangster?" "Usually, the room goes a little quiet when he walks in.

People rarely look the way you expect them to, even when you've seen pictures. The first thirty seconds in a person's presence are the most important. If you're having trouble perceiving and projecting, focus on projecting.

She'd never been good at banter; it was like a skipping rope whose rhythm she couldn't master enough to jump in with confidence. The war seemed not to exist here, despite the presence of officers in uniform.

And the feeling I had was not of wanting her so much as being surrounded by her, blundering inside her life without having moved.

It's the weird and terrible way of this place that a little thing, a hand on a head, can matter so much.

Being only where you were was incomplete, but being not at all where you were (because you were getting upset by the conversation you were having on your cell phone) was flat-out hazardous. That's when you walked in front of cars.

The sheer ordinariness of it all confounded Phoebe, as if any one of these things might happen several times a day, with no one watching. They belong to each other, she thought, and found herself awed by the notion -- knowing someone was there, just there, reaching for that person without a thought.

But we all know the drill: if we eat only candy, if we cultivate our friendships and relationships primarily online, if we forget to walk to town sometimes instead of drive, a crucial part of us will wither. You don't have to read all the books on your list at once. Just pick up the one that grabs you right now. If you don't love it, put it down. Move on.

I tried to let myself just... be. It was hard to let not knowing what was about to happen be a good thing. But I tried it out. Being in the moment. Not in the past or in the future. In this moment now.