Pico Iyer Quotes & Sayings

“It's no coincidence that the word 'holiday' suggests a holy day, or that the longest book in the Torah concerns the Sabbath. If you wish to advance in any sphere, the best way is to take a retreat.”

“In the past, I've visited remote places - North Korea, Ethiopia, Easter Island - partly as a way to visit remote states of mind: remote parts of myself that I wouldn't ordinarily explore.”

“For more and more of us, home has really less to do with a piece of soil than, you could say, with a piece of soul. If somebody suddenly asks me, 'Where's your home?' I think about my sweetheart or my closest friends or the songs that travel with me wherever I happen to be.”

“For centuries, Cuba's greatest resource has been its people.”

“Travel, for me, is a little bit like being in love because suddenly, all your senses are at the setting marked 'on.' Suddenly, you're alert to the secret patterns of the world.”

“The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug.”

“Hello Kitty will never speak.”

“We have more and more ways to communicate, as Thoreau noted, but less and less to say.”

“A holy day, after all, is a day for considering everything you otherwise think too little about.”

“The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual.”