Quote

The beauty of being foreign is that it snaps you awake.

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
Foreign
Beauty
Snaps
Awake

More quotes by 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
Image
For centuries, Cubas greatest resource has been its people.
Pico Iyer
Image
None of the things in life - like love or faith - was arrived at by thinking indeed, one could almost define the things that mattered as the ones that came as suddenly as thunder.
Pico Iyer
Image
I think China's view of freedom has to do with material wealth and modernity, and the Dalai's Lama view of freedom is liberation in the Buddhist sense, which is freedom from ignorance and freedom from suffering.
Pico Iyer
Image
I think that foreignness is always with you. Indeed, I find California more foreign to me the longer I live here. In thirty years of living here on and off, it hasn't lost anything of foreignness. If anything, it has gained.
Pico Iyer
Image
So it is that Lonely Places attract as many lonely people as they produce, and the loneliness we see in them is partly in ourselves.
Pico Iyer
Image
In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention.
Pico Iyer
Image
He [Dalai Lama] feels, and I feel, and everyone feels the suffering and frustration of the Tibetans who long for action, who long for a militant response. But, in some ways very few of those individuals have ever been in the position of being head of state.
Pico Iyer
Image
Mr. Trump doesn't radiate many of the qualities I respect. But what do I know? I've never met Trump. I know he's savvy enough to change his tune according to his audience and I don't know very much at all about how government works.
Pico Iyer
Image
Travel is not really about leaving our homes, but leaving our habits.
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
I think people like me are in a relatively privileged position because we have to some extent chosen to live in foreign places. I would always make the distinction between those who are exiles in terms of being thrown out of the place they want to be, and others who are exiles in terms of going toward a place they would rather be.
Pico Iyer
Image
I've also learned from [Dalai Lama] that we make the world by how we choose to look at it. In any situation you can make it constructive or dismaying, depending on that powerful computer we call the mind.
Pico Iyer
Image
So travel for me is an act of discovery and of responsibility as well a grand adventure and a constant liberation.
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
I often think we're most happy when we forget the time.
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
I remember many years ago, I asked [Dalai Lama] about exile and he said: Well, exile is good because it's brought me and my people closer to reality, and reality is almost a shrine before which he sits. Exile brings us up against the wall and forces us to rise to the challenge of the moment.
Pico Iyer
Image
Some people will always ground themselves very strongly in a piece of soil, a grandmother's property, a tiny plot of land, and that's great. But in the Age of Movement, there's no question that the number of people who don't - or can't - is growing exponentially.
Pico Iyer