Pico Iyer Quotes

“We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves. We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate. We travel to bring what little we can, in our ignorance and knowledge, to those parts of the globe whose riches are differently dispersed. And we travel, in essence, to become young fools again- to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.”

“A person susceptible to “wanderlust” is not so much addicted to movement as committed to transformation.”

“Writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.”

“And if travel is like love, it is, in the end, mostly because it’s a heightened state of awareness, in which we are mindful, receptive, in dimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.”

“...home lies in the things you carry with you everywhere and not the ones that tie you down.”

“None of the things in life - like love or faith - was arrived at by thinking; indeed, one could almost define the things that mattered as the ones that came as suddenly as thunder.”

“In an age of speed, I began to think, nothing could be more invigorating than going slow. In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention. And in an age of constant movement, nothing is more urgent than sitting still.”

“What more could one ask of a companion? To be forever new and yet forever steady. To be strange and familiar all at once, with enough change to quicken my mind, enough steadiness to give sanctuary to my heart. The books on my shelf never asked to come together, and they would not trust or want to listen to one another; but each is a piece of a stained-glass whole without which I couldn’t make sense to myself, or to the world outside.”

“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.”

“Perhaps the greatest danger of our global community is that the person in LA thinks he knows Cambodia because he’s seen The Killing Fields on-screen, and the newcomer from Cambodia thinks he knows LA because he’s seen City of Angels on video.”

“Serendipity was my tour guide, assisted by caprice”

“it’s not our experiences that form us but the ways in which we respond to them;”

“Sitting still as a way of falling in love with the world and everything in it;”

“Finding a sanctuary, a place apart from time, is not so different from finding a faith.”

“one is reminded, at a level deeper than all words, how making a living and making a life sometimes point in opposite directions.”

“The open road is the school of doubt in which man learns faith in man.”