Author

I would never call Jerusalem beautiful or comfortable or consoling. But there's something about it that you can't turn away from.

From Pico Iyer

Something in us is telling us we're moving too fast, at a pace dictated by machines rather than by anything human, and that unless we take conscious measures, we'll permanently be out of breath.

From Pico Iyer

I'm very happy to be a foreigner in Japan, and I can't think of a more wonderful place to live, but at the same time, I would never want to be Japanese, because they are subject to stresses that I am not.

From Pico Iyer

I think of myself as living so much outside borders or old categories that I choose as my leaders U2, the Dalai Lama, Vaclav Havel, Sigur Ros, Desmond Tutu, Barack Obama, and the girl next door. By definition, in short, my leaders are the ones who think in terms larger, and more intimate, than any country.

From Pico Iyer

Travel for me is all about transformation, and I'm fascinated by those people who really do come back from a trip unrecognizable to themselves and perhaps open to the same possibilities they'd have written off not a month before.

From Pico Iyer

What I treasure most at any moment is intimacy, surprise, a sense of mystery, wit, depth and love. A handful of cherished friends offer me this, and the occasional singer or film-maker or artist. But my most reliable sources of electricity are Henry David Thoreau, Shakespeare, Melville and Emily Dickinson.

From Pico Iyer

Though I knew that poverty certainly didn't buy happiness, I wasn't convinced that money did, either.

From Pico Iyer

I'm no Buddhist monk, and I can't say I'm in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I've written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn't want or need, not all I did.

From Pico Iyer

We can't change the world except insofar as we change the way we look at the world - and, in fact, any one of us can make that change, in any direction, at any moment.

From Pico Iyer

Where you come from now is much less important than where you're going. More and more of us are rooted in the future or the present tense as much as in the past. And home, we know, is not just the place where you happen to be born. It's the place where you become yourself.

From Pico Iyer

Pico Iyer

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