Finding Sanctuary

“A comma . . . catches the gentle drift of the mind in thought, turning in on itself and back on itself, reversing, redoubling, and returning along the course of its own sweet river music; while the semicolon brings clauses and thoughts together with all the silent discretion of a hostess arranging guests around her dinner table.”
― Pico Iyer

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

“it’s not our experiences that form us but the ways in which we respond to them;”
― Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

“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.”
― Pico Iyer

“Finding a sanctuary, a place apart from time, is not so different from finding a faith.”
― Pico Iyer, Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World

“... epiphanies rarely repeat themselves.”
― Pico Iyer, Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World

“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.”
― Pico Iyer, The Lady and the Monk: Four Seasons in Kyoto

“So it is that Lonely Places attract as many lonely people as they produce, and the loneliness we see in them is partly in ourselves.”
― Pico Iyer, Falling Off the Map: Some Lonely Places of the World

“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. You”
― Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

“One is reminded, at a level deeper than all words, how making a living and making a life sometimes point in opposite directions.”
― Pico Iyer, The Art of Stillness: Adventures in Going Nowhere

“One curiosity of being a foreigner everywhere is that one finds oneself discerning Edens where the locals see only Purgatory.”
― Pico Iyer, The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home