Quotes About Presence

The near stillness recalls what is forgotten, extinct angels.

I had a friend who introduced me to a meditation practice which involves a couple of half-hours a day of meditation, where essentially you try to achieve a stillness that allows you to just be there in the moment.

Pausing between stimulus and response allows you to show up in your life.

When I'm stirring a saucepan, I don't say to myself, 'Now the chancellor is stirring a saucepan.'

I don't think they like the idea that the people who are buying the record get to choose what goes out, because it's their job. The fans even pre-ordered stock to make sure that I had some sort of presence.

I see that I have, as part of my stock in trade, a very regal personality and carriage. I see that I have a kind of strength, a kind of command, and a kind of power that one would associated with a monarch.

If your fans are comfortable, then people are going to be stoked to be there.

If anybody ever points out to me I'm chewing scenery, I certainly like to stop doing that.

I happen to be a pessimist, and maybe that's a good thing because I don't stop to smell the roses - which is not a good personal thing. I don't stop and enjoy those moments... Always on to the next and never in the moment.

People need to stop filming things at festivals.

I had stopped going to church the moment I joined the Regiment. No more could my mother nag me into God's presence.

I've stopped racing to get to the red light.

For the first five years of music and first five years of acting, I don't remember it because I was running to where I was going. Finally I was like, 'Man, I missed everything.' So I just stopped, and I started looking around.

No matter how fast or how slow you get to the quarterback, it all goes to slow motion when you get there. Everything just stops. You don't see anything but the quarterback. You don't hear anything but the quarterback's breath. It's almost like you're a shark. Your eyes get real big and everything's just quiet.

I actually find it harder to act in the scenes where there's not much happening, say having a milkshake in the diner. That is far harder to do than straight scenes where there's a drama going on and you have something to do.

God is not distant: he is 'Emmanuel,' God-with-us. He is no stranger: he has a face, the face of Jesus.

Our principal contention is that walking is a profoundly social activity: that in their timings, rhythms and inflections, the feet respond as much as does the voice to the presence and activity of others,

I walk down memory lane because I know I'll find you there.

No matter how intense and competitive and driven you may be, don't shut out the opportunity to be in the moment, to embrace what you have, and hold on to it for as long as you can. Take time in your life for true fun and happiness and joy and laughter, wherever you can find it. It doesn't make you weak to enjoy your life and appreciate the things that give you satisfaction and a sense of accomplishment.

Goodbye, I say, goodbye, as I disappear little by little into the middle of the middle of my own spectacular now.

But nothing works better, nor reeks more strongly of racist and crass political opportunism, than the attacks leveled against immigrants of color, mostly from Mexico and other points in the global South, and the way so many within the chattering class (and even the ranks of elected officials) hope to whip us into hysteria about their presence within our shores.

When we speak of living environments and their effects on us, then, we are often speaking too broadly—of the city, the countryside, and so on. Our most immediate environment is actually formed by what holds our attention from moment to moment, whether having received or taken it. As William James once put it, "My experience is what I agree to attend to.

How he would have liked to sit there beside her. Not talking—not doing anything. Not so much as touching her. He had never felt like that before. Someone he just wanted to be with.

The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green earth, dwelling deeply in the present moment and feeling truly alive. —THICH NHAT HANH