“There is also present in every human being, in everyone's biography-although sometimes harrowing cases of systematic neglect, present in the matter of absence, so if longing for that which never was there then too, deeply suspect, should have been.”

“I’ve been so caught up with mapping out a picture-perfect “forever” that I’m completely neglecting my present, which I have far more control over anyway.”

“No matter how happy I had been in the past I do not long for it. The present is always the moment for which I love.”

“Should we become so proficient at self-presentation that we can dissemble without anyone suspecting?”

“under the present brutal and primitive conditions on this planet, every person you meet should be regarded as one of the walking wounded. we have never seen a man or woman not slightly deranged by either anxiety or grief. we have never seen a totally sane human being.”

“Anything which is just born, which has just come into existence, has no past behind it. Birth, in other words, is the condition of having no past. And likewise, anything which now dies, which has just ceased to be, has no future left in front of it. Death is the condition of having no future. But we have already seen that this present moment has both no past and no future simultaneously. That is, birth and death are one in this present moment. This moment is just now being born—you can never find a past to this present moment, you can never find something before it. Yet also, this moment is just now dying — you can never find a future to this moment, never find something after it. This present, then, is a coincidence of opposites, a unity of birth and death, being and non-being, living and dying. As Ippen put it, "Every moment is the last moment and every moment is a rebirth.”