Pico Iyer
Pico Iyer
Siddharth Pico Raghavan Iyer, known as Pico Iyer, is a British-born essayist and novelist of Indian origin, best known for his travel writing. He is the author of numerous books on crossing cultures including Video Night in Kathmandu, The Lady and the Monk and The Global Soul. An essayist for Time since 1986, he also publishes regularly in Harper's, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times, and many other publications...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionWriter
CountryIndia
serendipity caprice guides
Serendipity was my tour guide, assisted by caprice
christmas japan years
My Christmas present to myself each year is to see how much air travel can open up the world and take me to places as far from sheltered California and Japan as possible.
men thinking effort
It's impressive that a man [Dalai Lama], on the day after his Nobel Prize was announced, in October, 1989, said to me, "I really wonder if my efforts are enough?" Most of us, if we just won the Nobel Prize, would think this is vindication, or at last there's a chance for Tibet. He's the rare person who thinks, as a Buddha would, "I don't know if I've done enough, I don't know if I will do enough."
awake snaps
The beauty of being foreign is that it snaps you awake.
car wire changing-your-life
It so often happens that somebody says 'change your life' and you repaint your car rather than re-wire the engine.
writing alive way
Writing of every kind is a way to wake oneself up and keep as alive as when one has just fallen in love.
christian thinking action
[The Dalai Lama ] says Western traditions can teach Tibetans a lot about social action, and he thinks some Christians are very good at that.
age acceleration exhilarating
In an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow.
oddities worry world
The Australians, it seems to me, thrive on their remoteness from the world and see it as a way of keeping up a code of "No worries, mate," while peddling their oddities to visitors: nonconformity is at once a fact of life for many, and a selling point.
humility
Travel is an act of humility
moving thinking suffering
Suffering is a privilege. It moves us toward thinking of essential things and shakes us out of complacency. Calamity cracks you open, moves you to change your ways.
writing important alive
As Thoreau famously sead, it doesn't matter where or how far you go - the farther commonly the worse - the important thing is how alive you are. Writing of every kind is a way to wake oneself up and keep as alive as when one has just fallen in love.
school men doubt
The open road is the school of doubt in which man learns faith in man.
running problem
The more we run from a problem, the more we're actually running into it.