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America has a hold on imaginations that no other country does. I think that is partly because it is an immigrant country and there is still a kind of innocence in America that translates very well everywhere in the world.

Pico Iyer

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Pico Iyer
Age: 67
Born: 1957
Born: February 11
Essayist
Novelist
Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer
Still
Immigrants
Wells
Innocence
Well
Everywhere
Country
Hold
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Kind
Imagination
Imaginations
Think
Stills
Immigrant
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Doe
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America
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More quotes by Pico Iyer

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Movement is a fantastic privilege but it ultimately only has meaning if you have a home to go back to.
Pico Iyer
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Hello Kitty will never speak.
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What we have to do is act as clearly and with as pure motivation as is possible now, and that will sow the seeds for good action maybe in the twenty-second century.
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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.
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Just as there are many more Californians now to be found in the temples of Kyoto or the villages of Bali or the mountains of the Himalayas than ever before, what is also exciting is that one can just go downtown Santa Barbara and find ayurvedic medicine, Thai restaurants, and Japanese cars in abundance.
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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
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Travel is not really about leaving our homes, but leaving our habits.
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Serendipity was my tour guide, assisted by caprice
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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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So travel for me is an act of discovery and of responsibility as well a grand adventure and a constant liberation.
Pico Iyer
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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
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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'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
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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 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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In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention.
Pico Iyer
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The beauty of being foreign is that it snaps you awake.
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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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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For centuries, Cubas greatest resource has been its people.
Pico Iyer