290 Quotes by Pico Iyer

And just as it is common to hear how, when one is in love, anything one sees reminds one of that love – our feelings remake the world in a secular equivalent of the faith that sees the hand of God in everything – so I began to find that when one is thinking on a theme, everything seems to reflect on it. Suddenly, everything I saw or read, in this girlish city of temples, seemed to take me back to the theme of the lady and the monk.

Suffering is the central fact of life, from his Buddhist viewpoint; it’s what we do with it that defines our lives.

What if?” points in both directions.

Now I see it’s in the spaces where nothing is happening that one has to make a life.

As Henry David Thoreau, one of the great explorers of his time, reminded himself in his journal, “It matters not where or how far you travel – the farther commonly the worse – but how much alive you are.” Two.

In the past, Ive visited remote places – North Korea, Ethiopia, Easter Island – partly as a way to visit remote states of mind: remote parts of myself that I wouldnt ordinarily explore.

Serendipity was my tour guide, assisted by caprice.

Gandhi or Bishop Tutu or the Dalai Lama. I think they’re really embodiments of what we aspire to and, by keeping them in our heads, we’re reminding ourselves of who we could be. That’s what we’re hoping to climb up towards.

You rebel against your parents until you become them. One day you look in the mirror and you see your father’s face.