pico iyer travel quotes

Pico Iyer Quotes

Recommended quote pages.

• Help Center
• B Board Book Club
• P Picture Book Club
• J Junior Chapter Book Club
• M Middle Grade Book Club
• Gift a Book Club
• B Book Registries
• Beautiful Collections
• C Classrooms
• B Book Fairs
• Schedule Demo

Book Platform

• Find a Book
• Reading App
• Community Editors

Authors & Illustrators

• Get Your Book Reviewed
• Submit Original Work

Follow Bookroo

GRACIOUS QUOTES

30 pico iyer quotes (the art of stillness), top 9 most famous pico iyer quotes (best).

7 Pico Iyer Quotes on Stillness

“Not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury ; nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize.” Pico Iyer

6 Wise Pico Iyer Quotes that Will Make You Think

“To me, part of the beauty of a comma is that it offers a rest, like one in music : a break that gives the whole piece of music greater shape, deeper harmony . It allows us to catch our breath.” Pico Iyer

8 Pico Iyer Quotes on Traveling

“And 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, in dimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.” Pico Iyer

(MUST READ) A Beginner’s Guide to Japan: Observations and Provocations

• 44 Arnold Schwarzenegger Quotes (INSPIRING)
• Top 24 Wentworth Miller Quotes (PRISON BREAK)
• 50 Inspiring Peter Thiel Quotes (ZERO TO ONE)
• Top 40 Dorothy Parker Quotes (CREATIVITY)
• 48 Inspiring Barbara Corcoran Quotes (SHARK TANK)
• Top 23 John W. Henry Quotes (LIVERPOOL)
• 37 Inspiring Jack Dorsey Quotes (TWITTER)
• Top 35 Hubert de Givenchy Quotes (FASHION)

42 Inspirational Salvador Dali Quotes (ARTIST)

43 inspirational sylvester stallone quotes (rocky).

• Skip to main content
• Keyboard shortcuts for audio player

Book Reviews

Pico iyer's 'the half known life' upends the conventional travel genre.

A mesmerizing collection of essays that vividly recalls sojourns to mostly contentious yet fabled realms, Pico Iyer's The Half Known Life upends the conventional travel genre by offering a paradoxical investigation of paradise.

Iyer's deeply reflective explorations at once affirm and challenge the French philosopher Blaise Pascal's statement that "All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone."

After years of traversing the globe as the Dalai Lama's biographer and observing first-hand how people struggle with the search for a meaningful existence, Iyer, a noted British-American essayist of Tamil ancestry, has often wondered what kind of paradise can be found in our increasingly fractious world.

Since travel is often tied to escape/refuge as well as conquest/acquisition, the notion of paradise in today's context inevitably brings up attendant issues of loss, instability, violence and oppression. Voyaging from shadowy mosques and gardens of Iran (where the same Farsi word is used for both "garden" and "paradise") to the sterile skyline of North Korea; the deceptively peaceful lakes of Kashmir to the unyielding terrains of Ladakh and the tense sunlit lawns of Sri Lanka; the wrathful Old Testament landscape of Broome, Australia to the fog-shrouded, Bardo-like embankments of Varanasi; the clamorous streets of Jerusalem to the hushed temples of Koyasan, Japan, Iyer poetically depicts the otherworldly beauty of these places while trenchantly examining the paradox of utopia. Why do so many seeming paradises rupture in suffering and chaos? Is the serpent an inherent feature of paradise? In the process he also questions our idea of knowledge by positing that "the half known life is where so many of our possibilities lie."

While acknowledging that a flawed understanding of other cultures can create tragic consequences, Iyer believes "it's everything half known, from love to faith to wonder and terror," that actually guides the trajectory of one's life. Accordingly, there is usually a gap between our preconceived notion of happiness and a deeper, realer truth that we may intuit but tend to overlook in our pursuit of happiness. "The places we avoid [are] often closer to us than the ones we eagerly seek out," Iyer insightfully observes.

The notion of home/truth versus exile/illusion is fluid one — Iyer is less interested in binary thinking than in embracing contradictions. In his view, it's precisely our imperfect grasp of reality that both invites us to commune with other worlds and teaches us to be humble when we find ourselves untethered from the familiar. Therefore Iyer's idea of paradise, in embracing both engagement and conscious solitude, affirms yet also modifies Pascal's isolationist sentiment. In some way Iyer's worldview is closer to Olga Tokarczuk's Boschian universe of provisionary heretics in The Books of Jacob , and shares more kinship with limbo or hell than what we normally envision as the kingdom of perfect happiness.

In acknowledging suffering as an indispensable feature of paradise, Iyer emphatically renounces a pristine image of Eden, as embodied by North Korea's "massive stage set, all Legoland skyscrapers and false fronts." Seeing the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden as a necessary fall, and the Buddha's departure from his princely estate as a conscious acceptance of human frailties, Iyer concludes that a true paradise is only attainable through displacement.

While The Half Known Land is not without its romantic seductions — Iyer's indelible prose often conjures the hypnotic, teeming vista of a David Lean epic or the evocative interior of a Mira Nair picture — his descriptions are suffused with an awareness of loss. Although we are deeply enchanted by Iyer's recounting of his mother's fairytale childhood in Kashmir's alpine hills, we also understand his wish to relinquish this illusory past:

"Could [my mother's] memories of Kashmir still be found? Should they? The very British who had raised her and educated her so beautifully had also cut the honeymooners' valley into pieces and left it in the hands of implacable [Pakistan, Indian and Chinese] rivals ...."

In another bittersweet story about Kashmir, a Westerner's dream of escape turns into a long lasting, sustainable engagement with the region after the man suffered a devastating loss. In Iyer's riveting anecdotes, a sudden intimacy with death brings one closer to glimpses of paradise. This unflinching yet organic acceptance of death seems to nullify any hubristic attempt toward absolutes. Iyer's discussion of the Dalai Lama's pragmatism in treating various religious traditions as complementary medical systems — rather than mystical truths — seems especially apt. By concentrating on relieving human suffering, His Holiness's teachings are situated in the here and now, rather than in any theoretical exaltation of eternal life.

Finally, The Half Known Life offers us a revelatory refresher on American literature. Iyer's intimations of mortality help us embrace Herman Melville's visceral terror of the unknown in Moby Dick , and his engagement of diverse worlds brings to mind both Emily Dickinson's dwelling in possibility ("The spreading wide my narrow Hands / To gather Paradise") and Elizabeth Bishop's ambiguous epiphany in "Questions of Travel":

"Continent, city, country, society: the choice is never wide and never free."

Thúy Đinh is a freelance critic and literary translator. Her work can be found at thuydinhwriter.com. She tweets @ThuyTBDinh

30 Best Pico Iyer Quotes With Image

1. Pico Iyer is a renowned travel writer and author, but what may surprise many is that he is actually of Indian and British descent. Despite his Asian background, he was born and raised in England.

2. Despite his extensive international travels and exploration of various cultures, Iyer has been living in rural Japan for over three decades. This is quite unexpected for a travel writer who is known for constantly being on the move.

3. Iyer is well-known for his contemplative and reflective style of writing, but what many may not know is that he has been a practicing Buddhist for most of his life. His spiritual beliefs heavily influence his work and contribute to his unique perspective on the world.

4. While Iyer is widely recognized for his travel writing, he has also written several highly acclaimed novels. One of his most notable works, "The Lady and the Monk," explores his experiences and encounters while living in Kyoto, Japan.

5. Despite being a prolific writer, Iyer is notoriously private and avoids social media platforms. This is quite unusual in today's digital age where authors often engage with their readers through various online channels. Instead, he prefers to maintain a sense of solitude and anonymity, which allows him to focus on his writing and introspection.

Introduction

5 facts about pico iyer, 30 best pico iyer quotes, related quotes.

• Our Mission

An Interview with Pico Iyer, The Contemplative Traveler

For writer Pico Iyer, travel is a spiritual experience that shakes up our usual certainties and connects us to a richer, vaster world. Iyer talks with editor-in-chief Melvin McLeod about his new book, “The Half Known Life: In Search of Paradise,” and his eclectic contemplative practice.

• Share on Facebook
• Email this Page

Melvin McLeod: You write about travel as a transformative spiritual experience, even a spiritual practice. How do we approach travel in order to benefit from it spiritually?

Pico Iyer: I’ve always seen travel as a means of transformation. Part of its beauty involves not just leaving your home, but leaving far behind your habits and the self that you recognize at home. When you’re in a foreign place, you can’t define yourself in the ways you’re used to, and therefore there’s a chance to become a slightly different self.

I’m always seeking out those places that will overturn my assumptions, push me beyond what I think I know, and send me back a slightly different person from the one who left home. Of course, one doesn’t have to physically travel to be liberated from oneself, but it’s certainly a shortcut. If we’re in the streets of Varanasi, we can’t orient ourselves in familiar ways and we’re freed from our illusions of knowledge and of control.

The world is always richer than our ideas of it.

The ways that travel humbles us are also the ways it releases us. When I’m at home, I’m living according to plan, trapped within my preconceptions. But put me down in Jerusalem, and reality is coming at me from all directions. Travel strips me of the comfortable notions I hide behind. It cuts through projections and illusions very quickly.

These days it’s so easy to get the world secondhand, through small screens and in two dimensions, so there’s a greater need than ever to encounter the world in all its confounding intensity.

For me, travel is a confrontation with reality. It’s like when the Buddha left his gilded palace to confront head-on the realities of sickness, old age, and death. I left my comfortable job in New York City when I was twenty-nine, and I wasn’t unaware of the fact that my first name is Siddhartha, that my parents named me after the Buddha. I felt I was living in something of a gilded palace, and I wanted to meet the world head-on.

It seems to me that a lot of the problems we have today—racism, xenophobia, toxic nationalism—are because so many people have never been exposed to different peoples, cultures, and communities beyond their immediate world. Basically, they’ve never travelled. Do you think travel can be an antidote to the pervasive fear and hostility toward the other we see around the world?

Fear, I think, is always based on ignorance. But it’s a hard, vicious cycle to cut through. When I’m sitting at home and I think about Syria or Iran or North Korea, I focus on everything about them that’s different from my world. But as soon as I get off the plane in Damascus or Tehran or Pyongyang, I’m confronted with the human realities I have in common with the people in those countries. It’s only by keeping the world at a distance that we can preserve that illusion of difference. But as soon as we meet others in the flesh, we’re reminded of all the things we share.

The world is always richer than our ideas of it. I called my new book The Half Known Life to remind myself that it’s only when we’re at home and in our heads that we assume we’re so different from others. But when we’re actually in the streets of the world, we see all the ways we’re united with others that are beyond differences in custom or language.

The good news is that one doesn’t have to travel far to encounter the world. Go to Toronto or New York or San Francisco, and all the cultures of the world are on your doorstep. The most important division we see now is between the city and the countryside. Our cities largely belong to a multicultural, global, twenty-first-century reality, while the countryside is often more caught up in the old black-and-white definitions of the nineteenth century.

In a typical classroom today, there are children from many places and traditions, and I think that’s the signature quality of the twenty-first century. It’s true that nationalism is on the rise around the world, but I think that’s because it’s on the run. It senses that the world is incrementally losing its old black-and-white definitions and borders and turning into a multicultural, multicolored swirl. Certainly populism is shouting very loudly at the moment, but largely because the world is accelerating in a very different direction.

Can we ever know life fully—through travel or education or contemplation—or is the half-known life inherently part of the human condition? We long to know life fully, but can we ever?

I love that question. My prejudice is that not knowing is a permanent condition—and it’s a condition to embrace. Life doesn’t offer answers, and our lives are defined by how readily we embrace the state of answerlessness. Our lives will be made by what we do with the myriad things we can’t understand.

Don’t-know mind and not knowing as a form of intimacy are basic principles in Buddhism, particularly in Zen. That makes all the sense in the world to me. I’ve found that everything essential that determines my life—falling in love, seeing my house burn down, suddenly having the world stopped by a pandemic, stepping out onto the terraces of the Potala Palace in Lhasa and feeling myself lifted to a state that I didn’t know was inside me—all of these I can’t begin to explain, and they would only be reduced if I tried to put them into words or ideas.

I feel that our permanent condition is akin to being in a little tent in the Himalayas late at night. We may have a lantern or a flashlight, but otherwise we’re surrounded by the vast darkness of the nighttime sky, pinpricked with stars. We’re surrounded by things far greater and larger than we are, and how ready we are to accept them will define how happy our lives will be.

The phrase “the half known life” comes from Herman Melville. The poignancy of Melville’s life was that he was always trying to come to answers. What’s the meaning of life? Does God exist? What’s the relation of God to evil? I think there’s no answer to those, and he, by seeking answers to unanswerable questions, ended up walking sleepless through the streets of New York City, forgotten and unable to come to rest.

Unlike Melville, I feel that we need to come to rest in the awareness of everything that we can’t hope to understand.

The subtitle of the book is “ In Search of Paradise. ” Many of the places you go in search of paradise, such as Jerusalem, Northern Ireland, and Iran, are places with deep religious traditions and ideals of paradise. But they’re also places where religion itself is the source of great conflict. How do you experience the disconnect between their religious ideals of paradise and the reality of conflict?

For me, the disconnect is between the reality and the thoughts of reality I have, which will always be much smaller.

Jerusalem is a perfect example. It is the home of three great monotheisms, each beautiful in its own right. Yet the city of faith has been the city of religious conflict for more than two thousand years.

When I go there—and I’m not a Muslim or a Christian or a Jew—there’s something in the air, something in those ancient stones, that moves me almost to tears. Every morning I walk through the predawn dark to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. There, I sit in this little ragged space where there’s nothing but a rocky ledge and a glittering candle, and I feel transformed.

I feel that religious longing, the sense of something beyond us, is very real. But the theories and ideologies we create around that longing only cut us in two. What we do in the name of religion creates tribes of “us” versus “them,” “chosen” versus “unchosen” people. Whereas religious longing reflects the sense that there’s something there that is surely universal to us all.

I think my greatest teacher is silence. Silence seems to dissolve me and open me up to something much wider. I think everybody who’s been on a retreat, whether it’s a Zen retreat or time at a contemplative Catholic monastery, partakes of the same silence and clarity.

As you said so perfectly, I go in the search for paradise to places of great conflict and difficulty. This book was written during the pandemic, when all of us were living with death breathing down our necks, and my sense was that the only paradise I could trust was one I would find right in the middle of the real world, and in the face of death.

Here in Japan, where I sit now, they often talk about living joyfully in a world of sorrows. Sorrows are nonnegotiable—they’re a part of everybody’s life. But the fact of sorrows doesn’t have to preclude joy. And the fact of conflict in Jerusalem doesn’t have to preclude real moments of beauty and surrender and wonder.

Elaine Pagels, the great scholar of religions, said that this book is just a Buddhist parable, and she’s probably right. I suppose the book is my way of saying that we can’t hope to live in a world without suffering or difficulty or challenge. But none of those things means the absence of hope, of possibility, and the chance for kindness.

The Dalai Lama came from an obscure, impoverished place on the far side of the mountains to suddenly become the global friend of us all. This is one of the things that really gives me hope in the world. Two of his great friends were Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Vaclav Havel. One day Havel was in prison, and weeks later he was president of his country; Archbishop Tutu had never had a chance to vote for sixty-two years, and then he became one of the leaders of a post-apartheid South Africa.

These are wonderful reminders not to be stuck in despair or depression. Because the world is as suffused with miracles as it is with unpleasant surprises.

You’ve written beautifully in Lion’s Roar about your own spiritual practice, which draws on different contemplative traditions. What ties these contemplative practices together for you?

This goes back to what we were saying about not needing Religion with a capital R—where I believe this, and everybody else believes something else—but trying to find that common core all the contemplative traditions share.

The contemplative tradition doesn’t need to define itself as belonging to East or West or this school or that school. As somebody who doesn’t have a Buddhist practice, I’m deeply grateful for what I have learned from His Holiness the Dalai Lama. As someone who’s not Catholic, I’ve completed more than a hundred retreats with my Benedictine friends at the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California, where I benefit hugely from the monks’ kindness and devotion.

I went to an Anglican school in England, and we had to go to chapel twice a day. We had to sing the Lord’s Prayer in Latin on Sundays. So by the time I was twenty-one, I’d had enough crosses and hymns to last me a lifetime. Christianity was the one tradition I wasn’t open to in the ways I might be open to the Zen tradition or Sufism.

So it has been a perfect blessing to end up spending so much of my life with these Christian monks, who are very grounded and decent people. That has also given me the chance to learn from Thomas Merton, Richard Rohr, Father Thomas Keating, and other great Christian contemplatives. I’m glad I’ve been able to learn from these Christians, whom otherwise I think I would have written off.

In terms of my life, growing up between many cultures has been a challenge, because I haven’t been rooted in a single one. But it’s also been a blessing, because I’ve been able to learn from all of them. For example, I always try to spend autumn here in Japan, which is, for me, a deeply Buddhist country. My wife is Buddhist, and I met her in a Zen temple in Kyoto. I think the Buddhist tradition looks more closely at suffering, impermanence, and loss than any of the other traditions I’m acquainted with. So if you’re thinking about how to live in the midst of death, how to love in the face of loss, the Buddhist tradition has something to offer, whether or not you have a Buddhist practice.

Then, I feel that the light and sense of affirmation and resurrection of the spirit in the springtime is very strong in the Christian tradition. So I tend to spend my springs in the Benedictine Hermitage in California, because the light and the flowering and the celebration that happens in the spring takes full-bodied form there.

So I’m very grateful that Buddhism can teach me about the end of life, and Christianity can teach me about the light within the end.

One of the greatest challenges facing the world is toxic religion. That’s religion that is conflated with nationalism, racism, and forms of aggression and supremacy. It seems to me the best antidote to toxic religion is contemplative practice like yours, which is free from rigid, us-versus-them beliefs and emphasizes universal human experience. But how do we bring more people to the kind of contemplative practice you do when the hard certainties of toxic religion seem so appealing to people?

When I called my book The Half Known Life , it was a way of saying we don’t need certainty and we don’t need hard conclusions. But we probably do need spiritual counsel and wisdom to navigate a world that’s always going to have shadow as well as light.

I think the medical example is a good one. None of us is going to be cured of life. All of us are mortal and no doctor is infallible. All a doctor can offer is her best prescription for the condition she has diagnosed.

I think we all need that kind of expertise in life, which is why we have turned to the great contemplative masters through the ages, why we go on retreat, why we look for teachers. Because we need counsel and we need wisdom, but we certainly don’t need fixed or final truths.

Actually, I think the trend toward contemplative practice is developing very quickly. I think people are more and more exposed to traditions other than their birth tradition. We are aware of many more options than when I was growing up because there are many more teachers in our midst from every corner of the globe.

We take that for granted, but we’re very lucky. When my parents were in college, fewer than two thousand Westerners in the whole of history had set foot in Tibet. Now the wisdom of Tibet is found in every section of the world. Growing up, my parents never imagined they could listen to a Vietnamese Buddhist teacher. Now we have all benefited from the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh. How lucky we are that people in every part of the world can meet these amazing bringers of wisdom.

That’s why we’re seeing this developing movement toward contemplative religion. I think the world is moving very quickly beyond borders, in the same way it’s moving beyond fixed identities of every kind.

Your magazine is a perfect example of this. Forty years ago, if Lion’s Roar had existed, it might not have been easy to find people who speak for contemplative practice. Now I’m sure there are more people than you have space for. I feel Lion’s Roar has been chronicling not just the growth but maybe the explosion of this movement.

Advertisement

Supported by

Is That All There Is? A Secular Seeker Visits Holy Sites.

In “The Half Known Life,” Pico Iyer journeys around the globe to study conceptions of the world beyond.

• Share full article

By Mark Epstein

• Apple Books
• Barnes and Noble
• Books-A-Million

When you purchase an independently reviewed book through our site, we earn an affiliate commission.

THE HALF KNOWN LIFE: In Search of Paradise , by Pico Iyer

Ten times over 12 years, Pico Iyer accompanied the Dalai Lama across Japan. Inevitably, at every large public gathering, someone would ask what to do after having been disappointed by a dream not realized. The dreams themselves differed — peace in the Middle East, a reversal of climate change or hope for a relationship — but the disillusionment was always the same.

“Wrong dream!” the Dalai Lama would respond.

“The Half Known Life ,” with this vignette at its center, takes the Dalai Lama’s sentiment to heart. How to reconcile our wishes and hopes with reality? Where does paradise really lie? What can a secular seeker learn from the world’s holiest places? In Iyer’s hands , the search for paradise, the way out of the ego, doubles as an internal journey. Skittering from the gardens of Iran’s holiest mosques to the car-free streets of North Korea’s capital, from the avenues of East Belfast to war-torn Kashmir’s Dal Lake houseboats, from the outback of aboriginal Australia to the Ethiopian chapels of Jerusalem, from the empty moonscape of Ladakh to the massive stone Buddhas of Sri Lanka, from the graveyards of Japan’s mountain temples to the burning ghats of Varanasi, this elliptical odyssey, graced with occasional notes of light, finds itself by dwelling in the shadows. The places we avoid, Iyer says, are “so often closer to us than the ones we eagerly seek out.”

No stranger to the travel genre, the prolific Iyer is after something more here. His chronicle, which begins with an appreciation of the sophistication, beauty and culture of Iran, becomes a requiem for a world — and an existence — estranged from itself. There are only two things he is afraid of, he tells us: serpents and heights; and there are plenty of both here, along with crypts, tombstones, graveyards, burning corpses and flickering lights, “an infinity of reflections” in “a treasure house of riddles.” A lonely, nostalgic and haunted quality emerges as Iyer casually intersperses bits of his personal history. There is a formula to many of the chapters: He touches down in a new place, checks into a lodging and finds a taxi or guide to take him to the next site. We meet his drivers, listen to their surprising conversation and extract unexpected wisdom. “The writer’s job,” Iyer opines, “is to dismantle the very notion of Other by showing how your hurts belong to me, as my hopes do to you.” But empathy is not the only thing going on; Iyer is also looking within. And as he looks, things get dizzier and dizzier.

Iyer is not a Buddhist, but he has a Buddhist sensibility. Born in Oxford and educated in elite English boarding schools, he is a secular writer with an eye for the spiritual. His book has the soft ring of a classic Buddhist meditation strategy: In order to understand the emptiness of the ego, one must first find the self as it appears. This might sound easy, but in practice it is incredibly frustrating. The more one tries to zero in on the self, the more elusive it becomes. The process is often likened to a dog chasing its own tail — round and round you go until the very giddiness of the process whirls you into an unexpected understanding. “The Half Known Life” brings this uncertainty to the fore. By the end of the book, Iyer wakes to a fog-drenched Varanasi, the holy Indian city of the dead. He can barely see 30 feet in front of him. Fires from burning bodies add smoke to the mist. We are in a “half known realm” filled with “ghostly towers and palaces” where the only paradise is a “candlelit back alleyway” that shows the way home. Iyer references Emily Dickinson and Herman Melville as he gathers his conclusions; both writers inferred that “a keen sense of all that could never be fathomed” is the way to paradise.

For Iyer, this thing that could never be fathomed — the self, the past, one’s ancestors, the world — is also, first and foremost, death. It is everywhere in this book. Our lives are only half known, he concludes, because we can never tell what the final act will be. And we will be unable to reflect upon it after it occurs. “The fact that nothing lasts is the reason why everything matters,” he realizes while in the Japanese monastery of Koyasan. But it is in Varanasi that he brings it all together. As an Englishman with relatives in India, he had always avoided Varanasi. “Too dirty,” they had warned him. But it is there that he makes a critical connection. “Death is not the opposite of life,” he writes, quoting the Varanasi scholar Diana Eck. It is, rather, “the opposite of birth.”

Iyer probably knows, and would appreciate, the ancient Buddhist sutra “The Questions of King Milinda.” It is a discussion probing the nature of the self between the Greek king of Bactria (in present-day Afghanistan), a contemporary of Alexander the Great, and a Buddhist sage named Nagasena, an early example of the crossing of cultures so prominent in Iyer’s oeuvre. King Milinda wonders aloud if the self is permanent or impermanent. “Is the fruit of the mango tree in your garden sweet or sour?” counters Nagasena. “There is no mango tree in my garden,” Milinda replies. “Exactly,” says Nagasena.

Wrong dream, as the Dalai Lama suggested to his Japanese followers.

Mark Epstein is a psychiatrist in New York City. His latest book is “The Zen of Therapy: Uncovering a Hidden Kindness in Life.”

THE HALF KNOWN LIFE: In Search of Paradise | By Pico Iyer | 226 pp. | Riverhead | $26

Explore More in Books

Want to know about the best books to read and the latest news start here..

Salman Rushdie’s new memoir, “Knife,” addresses the attack that maimed him  in 2022, and pays tribute to his wife who saw him through .

Recent books by Allen Bratton, Daniel Lefferts and Garrard Conley depict gay Christian characters not usually seen in queer literature.

What can fiction tell us about the apocalypse? The writer Ayana Mathis finds unexpected hope in novels of crisis by Ling Ma, Jenny Offill and Jesmyn Ward .

At 28, the poet Tayi Tibble has been hailed as the funny, fresh and immensely skilled voice of a generation in Māori writing .

Amid a surge in book bans, the most challenged books in the United States in 2023 continued to focus on the experiences of L.G.B.T.Q. people or explore themes of race.

Each week, top authors and critics join the Book Review’s podcast to talk about the latest news in the literary world. Listen here .

National Geographic content straight to your inbox—sign up for our popular newsletters here

• INTELLIGENT TRAVEL

Meet the Writer: Pico Iyer

Award-winning essayist and travel writer   Pico Iyer has been a part of the National Geographic   Traveler family   since the magazine’s earliest days, contributing articles short and long and adding star power to live-audience events at Nat Geo’s headquarters in Washington, D.C.

“We’re always delighted to feature Pico’s refined and lyrical prose on places from Istanbul to Kyoto,” says   Traveler   Executive Editor Norie Quintos. “He has a singular ability to capture both a moment and a mood, root them firmly in a place, and render it all on the page,” she says. “The result is that the reader is transported.”

Here’s a brief peek into the life and times of Pico Iyer:

Home: I spend a few months a year in Japan on a tourist visa, but Santa Barbara has been my base since I arrived in the U.S. in 1965, when I was 8.

Urban Renewal: Even one’s hometown can be a grand adventure and discovery, if only one can look at it with the right–fresh–eyes.

Transferring Titles: The mystery stories of Ross Macdonald and Sue Grafton are fine evocations of the secrets and hidden treasures of Santa Barbara.

On the other end of the spectrum, I’m currently rereading Behind the Beautiful Forevers , by Katherine Boo . It’s the best nonfiction account of a very foreign place (a slum next to the Mumbai airport) that I’ve read in years. Anyone interested in our new global order–or humanity itself–would be moved and humbled to read it.

Wanderlust: I’ve always been haunted by Mali –just the sight and the thought of those mud-wall mosques draw me magnetically. I may have missed my chance for a bit, though, as new troubles seem to have descended.

Souvenirs: I’m fortunate to have enough travel memories and images to keep me going for decades.

• Nat Geo Expeditions

Pico Iyer   is an essayist and novelist whose   most recent book is   The Man Within My Head .   Iyer   also collaborated with photographer   Macduff Everton   on The Santa Barbara Book .

> Related:

• Pico Iyer’s Santa Barbara

FREE BONUS ISSUE

Related topics, you may also like.

Notes from an author: Pico Iyer on finding the ancient spirits of Koyasan, Japan

How hitchhiking through America spurred a love of desert walking for author Geoff Nicholson

The Ghanaian-British poet Nii Ayikwei Parkes discovers the dark secrets of his ancestral Caribbean homeland, in Guadeloupe

6 books about the UK to read this summer

Notes from an author: Sophie Pavelle on Dartmoor's wild, inspiring landscapes

• Perpetual Planet
• Environment
• History & Culture
• Paid Content

History & Culture

• Mind, Body, Wonder
• Terms of Use
• Privacy Policy
• Your US State Privacy Rights
• Children's Online Privacy Policy
• Interest-Based Ads
• About Nielsen Measurement
• Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information
• Nat Geo Home
• Attend a Live Event
• Book a Trip
• Inspire Your Kids
• Shop Nat Geo
• Visit the D.C. Museum
• Learn About Our Impact
• Support Our Mission
• Advertise With Us
• Customer Service
• Renew Subscription
• Manage Your Subscription
• Work at Nat Geo
• Sign Up for Our Newsletters
• Contribute to Protect the Planet

Copyright © 1996-2015 National Geographic Society Copyright © 2015-2024 National Geographic Partners, LLC. All rights reserved

• Quote of the Day
• Picture Quotes

Pico Iyer Quotes - Page 2

Standart top banner.

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

We may be joined these days more by the questions we have in common than by the answers we share.

Writing should ... be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover, or a message to a friend who has just lost a parent ... and writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger

What more could one ask of a companion? To be forever new and yet forever steady, to be strange and familiar all at once, with enough change to quicken my mind, enough steadiness to give sanctuary to my heart. The books on my shelf never asked to come together and they would not trust or want to listen to one another. But each is a piece of a stained-glass whole, without which I wouldn’t make sense to myself or to the world outside.

We travel to open our hearts and eyes and learn more about the world than our newspapers will accommodate.

Travel spins us round in two ways at once: It shows us the sights and values and issues that we might ordinarily ignore; but it also, and more deeply, shows us all the parts of ourselves that might otherwise grow rusty.

Movement is only as good as the sense of stillness that you can bring to it to put it into perspective.

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

We can better see what we don't have. The other man's grass is always greener and now we can actually go and visit his grass much more and feel the absence of green in our own lives.

We travel, in essence, to become young fools again - to slow time down and get taken in, and fall in love once more.

I love the fact that we can't explain coincidences. I think it's like sometimes you walk into a crowded room and you'll see a stranger and you feel as if you know her better than the friends that you came with. And the very fact that you can't explain it is what gives it its power, that it lies in some deeper or mysterious realm, I think.

I do think it’s only by stopping movement that you can see where to go. And it’s only by stepping out of your life and the world that you can see what you most deeply care about… and find a home.

Every day there are small moments when we have a choice: will we take in more stuff, or just clear our minds out for a bit?

Destinations are less important than the spirit you bring to them.

Traveling is a way to reverse time, to a small extent, and make a day last a year - or at least forty-five hours - and traveling is an easy way of surrounding ourselves, as in childhood, with what we cannot understand.

In an age of acceleration, nothing can be more exhilarating than going slow.

Any school would gain, if the students began the day with meditation, cleared their heads and got themselves centered.

All good trips are, like love, about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder.

Home is essentially a set of values you carry around with you and, like a turtle or a snail or whatever, home has to be something that is part of you and can be equally a part of you wherever you are. I think that not having a home is a good inducement to creating a metaphysical home and to being able to see it in more invisible ways.

In a world full of shifting borders, everything is happening all at once in every possible direction.

Not many years ago, it was access to information and movement that seemed our greatest luxury; nowadays it’s often freedom from information, the chance to sit still, that feels like the ultimate prize. Stillness is not just an indulgence for those with enough resources – it’s a necessity for anyone who wishes to gather less visible resources.

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.

In our appetite for gossip, we tend to gobble down everything before us, only to find, too late, that it is our ideals we have consumed, and we have not been enlarged by the feasts but only diminished.

...home lies in the things you carry with you everywhere and not the ones that tie you down.

last adds STANDART BOTTOM BANNER

Send report.

• The author didn't say that
• There is a mistake in the text of this quote
• The quote belongs to another author
• Other error

Latest quotes from interviews

"There's so much visible stuff around now, we're tempted to forget that it's usually the invisible that matters most."

Related Authors

• Born: February 11, 1957
• Occupation: Essayist
• Cite this Page: Citation

Get Social with AzQuotes

Follow AzQuotes on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Every day we present the best quotes! Improve yourself, find your inspiration, share with friends

Popular Topics

• Inspirational
• Motivational

SIDE STANDART BANNER

• Quotes about:
• New Quotes (81)
• American Dream
• Finding Yourself
• Los Angeles
• Politicians
• Time Travel
• Javascript and RSS feeds
• WordPress plugin
• ES Version AZQuotes.ES
• Submit Quotes
• Privacy Policy

Login with your account

Create account, find your account.

Travel Books And Other Good Reads For Wanderers

I f you’re looking for reviews of the latest and best new travel books, I don’t have you covered. But if you’re looking for inspiration for your next trip, actionable travel advice or a better understanding of the world you’re exploring, this list is for you.

This running list of books has given me valuable insight into places and cultures, inspired me to travel or made me think more deeply about the way we move around the world. I’m lucky to count lots of excellent writers among my friends, and you’ll find some of their books—and mine—here.

Happy reading!

You can support this site by purchasing books through our partner links . We may earn commissions on these purchases, but the reviews and recommendations here are independent, not paid for by publishers or authors and not subject to external review.

Beginner’s Guide To Japan by Pico Iyer

I read this while cruising through Asia and ahead of a 12-hour layover in Tokyo, my first visit to Japan. If you’re looking for a practical guide with train tips and sightseeing recommendations, this isn’t it. But if you’re looking to better understand Japanese culture and Japanese people, A Beginner’s Guide to Japan is a must-read.

By sharing his perspective as a sort of local, Pico Iyer helped me better understand the sleeping businessmen I encountered on the train from Haneda International Airport, the giggling schoolgirls I came across in Shibuya and the unwritten rules I observed being followed all around me. Reading this before stepping off the plane in Tokyo helped me get more out of a short trip and has me inspired to head back to Japan already.

This isn’t a travel guide by any means. It’s more of a cultural guide, and it’s a must-read for anyone traveling to Japan.

Devil in the White City by Erik Larson

If you’re into architecture, true crime or like to dive deep into the cities you visit, this book is for you. The Devil In The White City tells the stories of Daniel Burnham, the architect behind the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, and H. H. Holmes, widely believed to be the first serial killer in the U.S.

This book is historical nonfiction that reads like a murder mystery novel. As a Law & Order addict, I was all in. Reading feels like walking through the streets of Old Town, a neighborhood filled with opulent mansions built in the late 1800s around the time of the World’s Fair. This book will transport you to Humboldt Park’s idyllic boat house, the Ferris wheel at Navy Pier and a shadier time in Chicago history.

Chicago Scavenger Hunt by Jessica Mlinaric

For a more up-to-date guide to Chicago, check out this interactive guidebook to the best of Chicago’s hidden treasures. With Chicago Scavenger Hunt , Chicago-based author Jessica Mlinaric takes visitors on an interactive adventure across the city. This journey will take you to 17 neighborhoods in search of 300 pieces of local treasure.

Use the clues in this book to find little-known museums, vibrant examples of public art and historical markers worth the stop. Have a drink at Chicago’s smallest bar. Walk the Yellow Brick Road. Visit the nation’s first Black art museum or stay in the city’s most unique accommodations—a Bed & Breakfast run by monks.

Lonely Planet Iceland

If you’ve asked me for Iceland travel tips over the years, I’ve now got an entire guidebook for you. I wrote several introductory chapters and chapters on Reykjavik and southwest Iceland for Lonely Planet Iceland . A couple of Icelandic colleagues and an American colleague covered the northern and eastern parts of the island and taught me so much more about the country.

For my sections, I dove deep into Icelandic history and nature. I visited the LAVA Center, which has turned out to be an especially insightful experience considering how many volcanic eruptions have happened in southwestern Iceland since. What I’m most proud of, however, is getting an entire section of reasons travelers shouldn’t mimic Justin Bieber by editors and having the perspective to mention Bollywood films shot here as well as Hollywood blockbusters.

We also include lots of money-saving tips and demystify everything from Iceland’s unusually broad array of milk choices to its cultural fascination with elves.

Lonely Planet New York City

New York is a beast of a city to have to find your way around even as a seasoned traveler. This Lonely Planet New York City guide from a team of expert writers and current/former residents is designed to help.

I wrote the Toolkit and History of New York City in 15 places for this guide, and am so glad I got to put all the research I’ve done on Stone Street, the city’s museums and countless points in between over the years. I’m also thrilled to have my work alongside others whose work I admire and to see mentions of several of my favorite places across the boroughs.

A few key tips for your trip to New York City:

• Don’t accept rides from airport hustlers.
• Don’t plan to experience everything in one trip. It took me about eight years of living in New York to experience most of the things I wanted to do in the city, and I still have a few upstate day trips to make.
• Expect to spend more on accommodations than in other cities, but remember many of the best things to do in New York City are free.
• Never pay full price for Broadway tickets.

The post Travel Books And Other Good Reads For Wanderers first appeared on Travel With Meena .

I tried Taco Bell's Cantina Chicken menu and loved all 5 new menu items. It's a total game changer for the chain.

• Taco Bell's new Cantina Chicken menu is now available nationwide. 
• It features five new items: two tacos, a burrito, a quesadilla, and a bowl. 
• I loved the new Cantina Chicken, which is slow-roasted with spices, and the freshness of every dish.

There's no doubt 2024 is Taco Bell's biggest year yet for innovation.

The chain is releasing everything from a Baja Blast pie to a Cheez-It Crunchwrap Supreme , but I think its biggest success will be all about chicken.

Featuring five new items, Taco Bell's delicious Cantina Chicken menu will usher in a whole new era for the fast-food giant.

Taco Bell's Cantina Chicken menu is now available nationwide.

The new menu includes a soft taco, crispy taco, burrito, quesadilla, and bowl.

All five items feature Taco Bell's new Cantina Chicken, which has been slow-roasted with garlic, onions, and various chiles. Every order also comes with the chain's new avocado verde salsa, made with green chili peppers, tomatillos, and real avocado pulp.

Taco Bell's top executives think chicken is the next big fast-food trend.

"It's a protein that consumers feel really good about," CMO Taylor Montgomery told me at Live Más LIVE, Taco Bell's first superfan convention.

"I think they just feel better about eating it. It's a healthier protein option," the chain's CEO, Sean Tresvant, agreed. "I think that's where the tastes are going."

But the chain also wanted to ensure Taco Bell's "rebel spirit" was still reflected in its new chicken menu.

"We still gotta make it craveable!" Tresvant said. "Let's grill some cheese on the outside. Let's create an avocado salsa. It's so good, so different, and I think people are really going to like it."

And they're hoping the Cantina Chicken menu will help bring the lunch crowd to Taco Bell.

During Live Más LIVE, Liz Matthews — the chain's chief food innovation officer — told the audience of superfans that Taco Bell is always listening to their reviews of the brand.

"Keep that feedback coming because it actually guides everything we do," she said.

But that doesn't only mean bringing back beloved past items like the Mexican Pizza . The chain has also seen people on social media claim that Taco Bell is only meant to be a late-night spot, and it highlighted those posts in a new Cantina Chicken commercial with Jason Sudeikis.

"Getting Taco Bell during the daytime feels unethical," one message read.

Taco Bell wants the world to know that the new Cantina Chicken menu "isn't just for late-night." So, did it live up to the hype?

I sure think so. Here's my ranking of all five new menu items.

5. Cantina Chicken Crispy Taco

The $2.99 crispy taco features the new chicken, jalapeño sauce, and a melted and toasted three-cheese blend. The white-corn tortilla shell also features a layer of grilled cheese.

I first tried this crispy taco at Live Más LIVE and it scored the fifth spot in my ranking of 15 new Taco Bell dishes coming out this year . It tasted just as good the second time around, with a very generous amount of grilled cheese on the shell that I loved. The juicy and tender chicken pairs deliciously with the jalapeño sauce, and the bright avocado salsa helped cut through the very savory taco and add more depth to its overall flavor.

Taco Bell said the new salsa was designed to complement the entire Cantina Chicken menu, and it really delivers.

4. Cantina Chicken Soft Taco

This $2.99 soft taco features iceberg lettuce, shredded purple cabbage, cheddar cheese, pico de gallo, avocado ranch sauce, and the new chicken.

The pico de gallo and purple cabbage are new ingredients for Taco Bell, and their presence elevates the soft taco. They infuse so much freshness into the overall flavor, helping each bite taste crisp and vibrant. The avocado ranch sauce is delicious, and a drizzle of avocado verde salsa helped tie everything together. I was delightfully surprised by the Cantina Chicken Soft Taco when I first tried it at Live Más LIVE, and I think it'll be a huge hit for Taco Bell lovers who want something bright and light — especially for lunch.

3. Cantina Chicken Bowl

In addition to the Cantina Chicken, Taco Bell's new $7.99 bowl features seasoned rice, black beans, iceberg lettuce, shredded purple cabbage, cheddar cheese, avocado ranch sauce, sour cream, guacamole, pico de gallo, and avocado verde salsa.

The last time I ate a Taco Bell bowl was many years ago when I tried its (now discontinued) power bowl during a road trip. I was determined to be "healthier," a mission I deeply regretted as I picked through a bland mix of sad and limp veggies while my friend happily tore through their Crunchwrap Supreme across the table.

Thankfully, Taco Bell's newest chicken bowl is a massive upgrade. It comes packed with that savory slow-roasted chicken, which pairs deliciously with the black beans, avocado ranch sauce, and sour cream. As with the soft taco, the purple cabbage and pico de gallo add a burst of freshness that enhances the overall flavor.

I would order this when I need an easy and healthy lunch on the go — plus, it's cheaper than Chipotle's famous burrito bowl.

2. Cantina Chicken Quesadilla

Taco Bell's new $6.49 quesadilla combines the Cantina Chicken with its creamy chipotle sauce and a three-cheese blend, all wrapped up in a warm flour tortilla with grilled cheese on the outside. The tortilla is served with guacamole, sour cream dipping sauces, and a packet of avocado verde salsa.

I was such a fan of Taco Bell's new quesadilla. It's got far more heft than the chain's regular quesadilla, which is solid but leaves you with a lot of leftover tortilla, and adding the grilled cheese on top makes it deliciously indulgent. There was so much chicken in my quesadilla that it was oozing out of the top (no complaints here), and stacking the tortilla rather than serving it flat made each bite substantial and satisfying.

It was a warm and comforting mix of ingredients, with an added dose of freshness from the guacamole and avocado verde salsa.

1. Cantina Chicken Burrito

This $5.99 burrito features a double portion of chicken (compared to the tacos), iceberg lettuce, shredded purple cabbage, avocado ranch sauce, creamy chipotle sauce, cheddar cheese, pico de gallo, and avocado verde salsa.

Taco Bell's Cantina Chicken Burrito was the best thing I ate at Live Más LIVE, so I'm not surprised it held onto its top spot here.

It's the perfect replacement for the Fiesta Veggie Burrito and Chipotle-Ranch Grilled-Chicken Burrito , which were discontinued for the chain's new Cravings Value Menu this year — much to my dismay.

But all is forgiven thanks to this new menu item, which is bursting with similar freshness. The slow-roasted chicken is so satisfying in a burrito, and I love the texture from the grilled tortilla. All the veggies are super crisp, colorful, and bright, making this a burrito designed for the daytime.

If chicken is the future of fast food, Taco Bell is ahead of the game.

Taco Bell is releasing quite a few new chicken options this year , including chicken nuggets , and I'm truly impressed with how the chain is upgrading its menu.

I enjoyed every item on the Cantina Chicken menu and would happily order any of these five new dishes again. I already know the burrito and quesadilla will become part of my regular rotation — day or night!

I love that Taco Bell is experimenting with new ingredients and elevating what fast food in 2024 looks — and tastes — like. I can't wait to see what they come up with next.

• Main content