Quotes About Presence

I admire people who overcome obstacles or who have to commit - I've always really admired commitment, whether it be a commitment to living or a commitment to love. People who commit to a moment. People who are not somewhere else, but in the room with you.

The best actors just stay in the moment,and whatever happens in the scene is a genuine surprise. You really do not know what's going to happen next. But living that out in life is very dangerous because it throws you into a place where you don't know if you're going to survive.

Teenagers talk about the idea of having each other's 'full attention.' They grew up in a culture of distraction. They remember their parents were on cell phones when they were pushed on swings as toddlers. Now, their parents text at the dinner table and don't look up from their BlackBerry when they come for end-of-school day pickup.

One of the things I'm always reminded of when I'm back on stage is how much you have to be aware of and in control of. There is no tight shot. There is no 'we're only shoulders-up this time.' No, from the top of your head to your pinky toe, you're telegraphing part of the story the entire time you're up there.

I have a very good sense of my body and where it's at. Although I don't feel the ground in the same way that somebody else would, I'm very aware... I can feel pressure, and I know exactly where my toes are and exactly where my heel is.

Sometimes I am the 'philosophical professor, or I can do the voice like thunder if necessary... or if I want to keep the lads on their toes I might sit back and give them a thousand-yard stare.

All those chemicals that create empathy only work when you are in a room together.

I walk into rooms and I don't know why I'm there. I'm like, 'Why am I standing in front of the toilet now?'

matter how well you take care of the dying, no matter if you sit beside them every minute, every day—in the end they must go, and you stay.

And one day I got it. I lifted my head from the child's chest I was listening to and realized, with a shock of relief: whatever is coming, comes. That's what holds it all together. We are all of us here in the mess. There's no way around it. And all that I am in the face of it is a single voice and a pair of hands...Anonymous but necessary. Vital.

I now realize that to see the Major when he isn't really there must at least be preferable to seeing him when he really is there.

If you're going to go and buy a load of stolen goods, you can't take a whole crowd of friends with you. The presence of third parties reduces the prospective seller to a clamlike condition.

History resembles a guest list, in that sense, of the invited and the gate-crashers, the people, for whom we have been waiting, and those whose presence takes us unawares. Sometimes the gate-crashers prove to be the life of the party.

It is its absence which defines the importance of a thing.

But I am not here and never have been.

I'm here, got no choice. But you, you should be telling people.

I love you now. I'm with you now. I'll do my best, moment to moment, not to betray you. Now. That's it. No more. Don't make me lie to you.

Tu me remplis la tête comme ne savent le faire que les absents

You fill my head as only someone who is absent can.

On the page, these might look like the stones of a ruin, strewn by time and weather, but I was here.

But to pay attention is to love everything.

We hide in plain sight, in our bodies.

At home, it was part of my life that Ivo was always watching me, unblinking, the slits of his pupils expanding and contracting as a cat's do when it considers whether or not to pounce on its prey.

Gideon was there, warm and green and smelling slightly of cloves but not at all of bitterness and death, and I could hear no voices in my head at all.