“I notice your absence. I notice your non presence and reflect on the time you were present, in the present, which is obviously in the past.”

“Open your eyes and see how many gifts there are to unwrap. Notice the presence of your presents. It’s not your life that is disappointing: it’s your mind.”

“Reflect upon your present blessings -- of which every man has many -- not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.”

“It is when we notice the dirt that God is most present in us; it is the very sign of His presence.”

“It was as if he stopped time for them two weeks out of every year, cut them off from both the past and the future so that they had only this present in a brand-new place, this present in which her children sought the sight and the scent of her: a wonderful thing, when you noticed it. When the past and the future grew still enough to let you notice it. He did that for her. This man she'd married.”

“Gerald Westerby, he told himself. You were present at your birth. You were present at your several marriages and at some of your divorces, and you will certainly be present at your funeral. High time, in our considered view, that you were present at certain other crucial moments in your history.”