You can continue your practice, you can exercise kindness, you can practice meditation whether you're in a prison or a millionaire's house, whether you're in India or Tibet.

I began thinking about why am I constructing almost a shadow father or ghost father in my head into Graham Greene in response to the father who created me? What's going on here? I think a part of my sense is it's every boy's story. When we are kids, we imagine that to define ourselves or to find ourselves means charting your own individuality, making your own destiny and actually running away from your parents and your home and what you grew up with.

When one questions [Dalai Lama's] political actions, it is worth remembering that he's the single most experienced politician on the planet at this moment.

When I'm wandering around the Himalayas, most of the people that I see are Westerners from Germany, California, or the Netherlands, who are wearing sandals, Indian smocks, and are in search of enlightenment, antiquity, peace, and all the things they can't get in the west. Most of the people they meet are Nepali villagers in Lee jeans, Reeboks, and Madonna T-shirts who are looking for the paradise that they associate with Los Angeles - a paradise of material prosperity and abundance.

I think people's minds are going to have to assimilate in the sense that all the world is international now. The whole world has gone global. I think cities like San Francisco and Los Angeles are the models of our future.

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves.

Yet [Dalai Lama] has said very strongly that basic freedoms of thought and speech have to be respected in Tibet and they're not at the moment. Tolerance doesn't mean accepting what's unfair.