Everyone is a Wordsworth in certain moods, and every traveler seeks out places that every traveler has missed. Pico Iyer More Quotes by Pico Iyer More Quotes From Pico Iyer Yet [Dalai Lama] has said very strongly that basic freedoms of thought and speech have to be respected in Tibet and they're not at the moment. Tolerance doesn't mean accepting what's unfair. Pico Iyer tolerance speech mean Many people would say that A Tibetan monk, even in Lhasa, may be free while the ruler of China may not be free. Pico Iyer monk may people I wanted to bring the book out right now because I think anyone who cares about Tibet knew there would be disturbances in the run up to the Olympics [2008]. Many Tibetans feel it's their last chance to broadcast their suffering and frustration and pain to the world before the Olympics take place and China is accepted as a modern nation and the world forgets about Tibet. Pico Iyer pain running book 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. Pico Iyer buddhist ignorance thinking As a member of the mainstream media for many years, I've learned just one thing: never to trust anything I read in the mainstream media - not because of any agenda or deliberate dissimulation, but simply because it's filtered and comes very often from someone whose judgment I might not trust in other circumstances. Pico Iyer agendas media years [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. Pico Iyer views years thinking I would say that by virtue of transforming politics, [Dalai Lama] is in fact easily underestimated. Pico Iyer lama virtue facts I think Dalai Lama efforts have been heroic. Pico Iyer heroic effort thinking 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. Pico Iyer me moment friends love We readily go to the health club when our doctor suggests we need more exercise, but we regularly neglect the 'mental health club' that our well-being more truly requires. Pico Iyer doctor mental-health health exercise A traveler is really not someone who crosses ground so much as someone who is always hungry for the next challenge and adventure. Pico Iyer challenge someone always adventure Home is, in the end, not just the place where you sleep, but the place where you stand. Pico Iyer place you home sleep Older boys were allowed to beat younger ones at my 15th-century English boarding school, and every boy had to run a five-mile annual steeplechase through the sludge and rain of an October day, as horses do. We wrote poems in dead languages and recited the Lord's Prayer in Latin every Sunday night. Pico Iyer day prayer rain night 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. Pico Iyer i-am think happy time Nearly everybody I know does something to try to remove herself to clear her head and to have enough time and space to think... All of us instinctively feel that something inside us is crying out for more spaciousness and stillness to offset the exhilarations of this movement and the fun and diversion of the modern world. Pico Iyer feel space time world 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. Pico Iyer yourself you future home It takes 25 minutes to recover from a phone call or an e-mail, researchers have found, and yet the average person receives such an interruption every 11 minutes. Which means that we're never caught up; we're always out of breath, running behind. Pico Iyer phone-call phone behind never In Vancouver, in Sydney and in Orange County, we live among fluorescent stores and streets so brightly lit that you can read a book after dark; in other places across our global body, there are blackouts and curfews every night. Pico Iyer you dark night book In many a piece of music, it's the pause or the rest that gives the piece its beauty and its shape. And I know I, as a writer, will often try to include a lot of empty space on the page so that the reader can complete my thoughts and sentences and so that her imagination has room to breathe. Pico Iyer thoughts music imagination beauty I would never call Jerusalem beautiful or comfortable or consoling. But there's something about it that you can't turn away from. Pico Iyer something never you beautiful