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Our own country seemed more polarized than it's ever been and since the two terrorist attacks of 9/11, religion was in greater disrepute than at any other time in my lifetime.

Pico Iyer

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Pico Iyer
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: February 11
Essayist
Novelist
Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer
Time
Seemed
Lifetime
Since
Greater
Religion
Disrepute
Two
Polarized
Ever
Attacks
Country
Terrorist

More quotes by Pico Iyer

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Finding a sanctuary, a place apart from time, is not so different from finding a faith.
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For more and more of us, home has less to do with a piece of soil than a piece of soul.
Pico Iyer
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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.
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I like the way that American has become a kind of spiritual home even for people who have never seen it. American dreams are strongest of all in the hearts of people who have only seen America in their dreams. I think it's refreshing and reviving to go around the world and see how America still occupies this special place.
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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
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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
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The beauty of being foreign is that it snaps you awake.
Pico Iyer
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I think of the Dalai Lama as a doctor of the mind offering medicine and specific counsel and cures in the way a great doctor would.
Pico Iyer
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Every day there are small moments when we have a choice: will we take in more stuff, or just clear our minds out for a bit?
Pico Iyer
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Most of us who have been lucky enough to hear, read and see the Dalai Lama, often come away thinking, What a kind, inspiring and golden human being! That is true, but I think it does him an injustice.
Pico Iyer
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We travel, initially, to lose ourselves and we travel, next to find ourselves.
Pico Iyer
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Serendipity was my tour guide, assisted by caprice
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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
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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
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You can see exile as loss, and then it will be a loss for you. You can treat it as opportunity and then all kinds of benefits accrue.
Pico Iyer
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Travel, for me, is a little bit like being in love, because suddenly all your senses are at the setting marked “on.
Pico Iyer
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[The Dalai Lama ] says Western traditions can teach Tibetans a lot about social action, and he thinks some Christians are very good at that.
Pico Iyer
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I would say that by virtue of transforming politics, [Dalai Lama] is in fact easily underestimated.
Pico Iyer
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We may be joined these days more by the questions we have in common than by the answers we share.
Pico Iyer
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As soon as I'm on the road, I see, often palpably, that I know nothing at all, which is always a great liberation.
Pico Iyer