Quote

And it’s only by going nowhere - by sitting still or letting my mind relax - that I find that the thoughts that come to me unbidden are far fresher and more imaginative than the ones I consciously seek out.

Pico Iyer

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Pico Iyer
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: February 11
Essayist
Novelist
Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer
Going
Seek
Mind
Sitting
Unbidden
Thoughts
Fresher
Ones
Consciously
Stills
Imaginative
Still
Nowhere
Find
Letting
Come
Relax

More quotes by Pico Iyer

Image
Not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize. Stillness is not just an indulgence for those with enough resources – it’s a necessity for anyone who wishes to gather less visible resources.
Pico Iyer
Image
But it’s only by having some distance from the world that you can see it whole, and understand what you should be doing with it.
Pico Iyer
Image
Anybody who travels knows that you're not really doing so in order to move around - you're traveling in order to be moved. And really what you're seeing is not just the Grand Canyon or the Great Wall but some moods or intimations or places inside yourself that you never ordinarily see when you're sleepwalking through your daily life.
Pico Iyer
Image
In a world full of shifting borders, everything is happening all at once in every possible direction.
Pico Iyer
Image
Its no coincidence that the word holiday suggests a holy day, or that the longest book in the Torah concerns the Sabbath. If you wish to advance in any sphere, the best way is to take a retreat.
Pico Iyer
Image
Technology, in short, cannot teach me how to do without technology.
Pico Iyer
Image
A holy day, after all, is a day for considering everything you otherwise think too little about.
Pico Iyer
Image
American dreams are strongest in the hearts of those who have seen America only in their dreams.
Pico Iyer
Image
With the war in Iraq, he [Dalai Lama] feels that the causes of that lie maybe hundreds of years ago, and he says, What we do now may have consequences far into the future that we will never see.
Pico Iyer
Image
For centuries, Cubas greatest resource has been its people.
Pico Iyer
Image
There's so much visible stuff around now, we're tempted to forget that it's usually the invisible that matters most.
Pico Iyer
Image
Yet [Dalai Lama] has said very strongly that basic freedoms of thought and speech have to be respected in Tibet and they're not at the moment. Tolerance doesn't mean accepting what's unfair.
Pico Iyer
Image
I'd spent thirty years visiting the Dalai Lama, and twenty years as a journalist going to difficult places, war zones and revolutions from North Korea to Haiti and Beirut to Sri Lanka, and the question came up: What does this man have to offer to this world which seems so torn up and so attached to conflict?
Pico Iyer
Image
When one questions [Dalai Lama's] political actions, it is worth remembering that he's the single most experienced politician on the planet at this moment.
Pico Iyer
Image
The Dalai Lama says Tibet and the modern world can engage in a conversation perhaps Tibet has something to share with the rest of us based on its researches into mind, and we have a lot that we can share with Tibet.
Pico Iyer
Image
For if every true love affair can feel like a journey to a foreign country, where you can’t quite speak the language, and you don’t know where you’re going, and you’re pulled ever deeper into the inviting darkness, every trip to a foreign country can be a love affair, where you’re left puzzling over who you are and whom you’ve fallen in love with.
Pico Iyer
Image
Home is not just the place where you happen to be born. Its the place where you become yourself.
Pico Iyer
Image
Often when we think of exile we think of destruction or loss. But the Dalai Lama always says exile is reality, it's something we can make use of, and he has used it to get rid of everything that he thought was stifling and old, and to create a new, improved and much healthier Tibet.
Pico Iyer
Image
Dalai Lama is transforming those criteria - and the whole way of conducting politics. He's conducting politics in a much deeper way than most politicians are able to. He's the only politician I know of who's a monk. The Pope, of course, is in a similar position, but the Pope isn't in the same way leading a country of many million people.
Pico Iyer
Image
It so often happens that somebody says 'change your life' and you repaint your car rather than re-wire the engine.
Pico Iyer