“Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.”

“The key is to keep company only with people who uplift you, whose presence calls forth your best.”

Epictetus (50–138) philosopher from Ancient Greece

“Citation does not necessarily reflect current demand.”

Brian Campbell Vickery (1918–2009) British information theorist

“Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black. She has a knife, knife, knife, stuck in her back, back, back. She cannot breathe, breathe, breathe. She cannot cry, cry, cry. Thats why she begs, begs, begs. She begs to die, die, die..”

Laurie Faria Stolarz (1972) American writer

“The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from everyday life.”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

“In solitude, at last, we’re able to let God define us the way we are always supposed to be defined—by relationship: the I-thou relationship, in relation to a Presence that demands nothing of us but presence itself. Not performance but presence”

Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest

“The most acceptable prayer is the one offered with the utmost spirituality and radiance; its prolongation hath not been and is not beloved by God. The more detached and the purer the prayer, the more acceptable is it in the presence of God.”

Báb (1819–1850) Iranian prophet; founder of the religion Bábism; venerated in the Bahá'í Faith

“When we judge other people we confront them in a spirit of detachment, observing and reflecting as it were from the outside. But love has neither time nor opportunity for this. If we love, we can never observe the other person with detachment, for he is always and at every moment a living claim to our love and service.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

“We must have a pie. Stress cannot exist in the presence of a pie.”

David Mamet Boston Marriage

“Emotions, or rather feelings, cannot be felt by an individual without the presence of the mind.”

Mwanandeke Kindembo (1996) Congolese author