Quotes: Pico Iyer

"The Dalai Lama ... reminds us that the only way to live in a world of constant change is not to pretend that it might be otherwise. We may have little control over external circumstances, but we have a lot of control over how we respond to them, and how much we choose to take loss to be fresh opportunity. [...]

"But the ever-more-visible precariousness of our homes – and the places we love – is telling us, every hour, not to waste a moment or assume that everything will remain the same."

–– Pico Iyer (b. 1957) British-born novelist and essayist 

Source: Pico Iyer. 'The Vanishing.' The Globe and Mail, Saturday, August 26, 2023, p. O3; 

Quotes: Pico Iyer

"Travel is, ultimately, about those words that begin in "trans." Transport, transcendence, and transformation. It's not the sights that send one home a different person; it's something around the sights, between the lines, a moment when one forgets oneself, that sudden serendipity not to be found on any postcard or secondhand image." 

–– Pico Iyer (b. 1957) British-born novelist and essayist 

Source: Pico Iyer. "Why we must see the world for ourselves, now more than ever." The Globe and Mail. Saturday August 11, 2018, p. O4.

via: Art Alternatives Knapsack Sketchbook 2018 f, 2018, p. 31. 

Quotes: Pico Iyer

"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, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end." 

–– Pico Iyer (b. 1957) British-born novelist and essayist 

Source: Alexander Bisely. 'How far do we need to go to find paradise?' The Globe and Mail, Saturday April 29, 2023, p. P4. Quote is from Pico Iyer's 1998 essay, Why We Travel.

Quotes: Pico Iyer

"We've always needed rituals to give continuity to our lives, to offer protection and even meaning to our hours, to humble and exalt us with the reminder that our days are not as random as they seem. Ritual is what turns chaos into a kind of order."

–– Pico Iyer (b. 1957) British-born novelist and essayist 

Source: Pico Iyer. 'Rituals of the Fast-Moving World.' enRoute Magazine, October 2019, p. 78. 

via: Sketchbook 31, 2019, p. 15.

Quotes 43: Pico Iyer

"The richest part of life lies in the space between absence and presence."

–– Pico Iyer (b. 1957) British-born novelist and essayist

Source: Pico Iyer. A Beginner's Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2019, p. 124. 

via Book of Commonplace 2020-present, p. 65.