Contractions, ‘U’ for ‘you’ and the like are wonderful to make communication brief and efficient – but we wouldn’t want all our talk to be only brief and efficient. Taking pauses out of language would be like taking the net away from a tennis game. Where would all the fun go? Pico Iyer Read Quote
I couldn’t follow the events of September 11 because I was proofreading a novel I’d just completed – on Islam and its quarrel with the West – that I’d promised, six months earlier, to deliver to my editor on September 12, 2001. Pico Iyer Read Quote
The average American teenager sends or receives 75 text messages a day, though one girl in Sacramento managed to handle an average of 10,000 every 24 hours for a month. Pico Iyer Read Quote
I think writing is really about a journey of understanding. So you take something that seems very far away, and the more you write about it, the more you travel into it, and you see it from within. Pico Iyer Read Quote
I think it’s in human nature to want to have more, to compete with the other and, at some level, to be dissatisfied if someone else has more than you. Pico Iyer Read Quote
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. Pico Iyer Read Quote
I remember how, in the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied. Pico Iyer Read Quote
I think of myself as living so much outside borders or old categories that I choose as my leaders U2, the Dalai Lama, Vaclav Havel, Sigur Ros, Desmond Tutu, Barack Obama, and the girl next door. By definition, in short, my leaders are the ones who think in terms larger, and more intimate, than any country. Pico Iyer Read Quote
A holy day, after all, is a day for considering everything you otherwise think too little about. Pico Iyer Read Quote
