What's funny is that the idea of popularity - even the use of the word 'popular' - is something that had been mostly absent from my life since junior high. In fact the hallmark of life after junior high seemed to be the shedding of popularity as a central concern.

Men can absent themselves from real life for their art more easily. Women are anchored into the quotidian business of getting food on the table making sure everybody's socks match the soccer gear is ready. I admire idealists but they're usually enabled by someone who holds the tether on their balloon who pays the bills and sweeps up after them.

In the long term Germany didn't need a finance minister who was absent during important negotiations in the European Council. But the chancellor strongly encouraged me to stay. And everything did work out for the best in the end.

The supreme lesson of any education should be to think for yourself and to be yourself absent this attainment education creates dangerous stupefying conformity.

My dad was an absentee dad so it was always important to me that I was part of my daughter's life and she deserved two parents which is part of the rationale behind us staying married for 30 years.

When a father absent during the day returns home at six his children receive only his temperament not his teaching.

We emphasize that such a form of communication is not absent in man however evanescent a naturally given object may be for him split as it is in its submission to symbols.

I suppose that by being absent from the music business it appeared that I just dropped out but really I never did. I was continuously working and doing various things.

A person however learned and qualified in his life's work in whom gratitude is absent is devoid of that beauty of character which makes personality fragrant.

A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds it seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before the change.