The world other than as advertised can be an amazing place.

I think it is immensely difficult to get the U.S. interested in non-U.S. topics. I dont think this is because the average American reader is disinterested, but more because of publishers playing it safe: if a thriller based in L.A. is a sure winner, why spend money plugging one based in Paris - or Bangkok?

The function of the West is to turn bodies and minds into products. It cannot understand that the rest of the world holds this to be an obscenity, a corruption of our nirvanic nature.

Shun security, I advise aspiring novelists when they complain to me that they are stuck. Get disoriented. Maybe your agonizing writing block isnt agonizing enough. Your enemy is comfort.

Just studying Buddhism, then meditating and going to Buddhist monasteries, talking to Buddhist monks, combined with the Thai people themselves, changed the way I look at the world.

To a Buddhist, contradictions only exist in a mind that has been forced to cultivate them.

Expecting to be wrong about most things most of the time brings, finally, the kind of humility that leads to peace. I think.