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
loyalty distance mean
A lack of affiliation may mean a lack of accountability, and forming a sense of commitment can be hard without a sense of community. Displacement can encourage the wrong kinds of distance, and if the nationalism we see sparking up around the globe arises from too narrow and fixed a sense of loyalty, the internationalism that's coming to birth may reflect too roaming and undefined a sense of belonging.
father mirrors parent
You rebel against your parents until you become them. One day you look in the mirror and you see your father's face.
home light luxury
For me the first great joy of traveling is simply the luxury of leaving all my beliefs and certainties at home, and seeing everything I thought I knew in a different light, and from a crooked angle.
home thinking movement
I do think it’s only by stopping movement that you can see where to go. And it’s only by stepping out of your life and the world that you can see what you most deeply care about… and find a home.
writing conscious
The less conscious one is of being a writer, the better the writing.
people monk tibetan
Many people would say that A Tibetan monk, even in Lhasa, may be free while the ruler of China may not be free.
being-in-love love-is littles
Travel, for me, is a little bit like being in love, because suddenly all your senses are at the setting marked “on.
adventure responsibility thinking
I take very seriously the sense of our living these days in a global neighborhood. And the first sensible thing to do in such circumstances, as well as one of the most rewarding things, is to go and meet the neighbors, find out who they are, and what they think and feel. So travel for me is an act of discovery and of responsibility as well a grand adventure and a constant liberation.
home privilege movement
Movement is a fantastic privilege but it ultimately only has meaning if you have a home to go back to.
buddhist ignorance thinking
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.
home soul soil
For more and more of us, home has less to do with a piece of soil than a piece of soul.
eden curiosity purgatory
One curiosity of being a foreigner everywhere is that one finds oneself discerning Edens where the locals see only Purgatory.
adventure responsibility discovery
So travel for me is an act of discovery and of responsibility as well a grand adventure and a constant liberation.
thinking long point-of-view
[The Dalai Lama] told me some years ago, "I've made every concession to China, and I've been as open and tolerant as I could, and still things get worse in Tibet." If you look at it from one point of view, as he himself says, his monastic position of forbearance and nonviolence hasn't reaped any benefits. And yet, he's thinking in terms of the long term, of centuries.