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I'm one of those perverse people who likes being alone. I always took myself to be a community of one. That's what I am comfortable with.

Pico Iyer

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Pico Iyer
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: February 11
Essayist
Novelist
Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer
Perverse
Likes
Took
Comfortable
Alone
Community
Always
People

More quotes by Pico Iyer

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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
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The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them the information revolution came without an instruction manual.
Pico Iyer
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Living here in California, I think one of the scariest things about California is the fact that it is rewriting its script and changing constantly and so many people don't know who they will be and who they will be with a year from now.
Pico Iyer
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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
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Hello Kitty will never speak.
Pico Iyer
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When I was two years old, I heard about his [Dalai Lama] flight from Tibet. Being very little, I said, Oh, good Tibetans, bad Chinese. Those were the black-and-white ways that I thought.
Pico Iyer
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I think people's minds are going to have to assimilate in the sense that all the world is international now. The whole world has gone global. I think cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles are the models of our future.
Pico Iyer
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It so often happens that somebody says 'change your life' and you repaint your car rather than re-wire the engine.
Pico Iyer
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I often think we're most happy when we forget the time.
Pico Iyer
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The Dalai Lama says that when a Catholic and a Buddhist speak, the Buddhist becomes a deeper Buddhist and the Catholic becomes a deeper Catholic.
Pico Iyer
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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
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He [The Dalai Lama] has made it his mission to say, We can't afford to squabble over minor differences, we have to concentrate on what we have in common, our common mission, our common culture - and indeed what we have in common with the rest of the world.
Pico Iyer
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Literally, when you wake up at 9 o'clock in the morning in Havana you don't know where you'll be at noon. But it's a safe guess that you'll either be married, arrested, or in the midst of some incredible transaction where somebody is stealing your passport or paying you in Dominican pesos for it, or whatever. It's a wild place.
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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American dreams are strongest in the hearts of those who have seen America only in their dreams.
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
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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
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Dalai Lama was leading his country during the rigors of World War II, he was in Beijing for a year in 1954 he was up against Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai from the time that he was fifteen. So he's no newcomer or naive when it comes to politics.
Pico Iyer
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The Dalai Lama, these days, encourages Westerners not to take up Buddhism, partly because he feels that our roots are deep in other traditions, and we should go deeper into our own traditions rather than just acquiring the surfaces of others.
Pico Iyer
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To this day, at my relatively advanced age, I still don't have a place I can really call home. I've never bought property. I just move between temporary base camps. I know that the very notion of home, of having a family or community, is a hard one for me to embrace.
Pico Iyer