I remember many years ago, I asked [Dalai Lama] about exile and he said: "Well, exile is good because it's brought me and my people closer to reality," and reality is almost a shrine before which he sits. Exile brings us up against the wall and forces us to rise to the challenge of the moment.

If you'd asked me some years ago, I would have said [Dalai Lama] is an extraordinarily compassionate, clear-sighted, calm human being. But now, I'm more convinced than ever that his political positions as well as his spiritual positions arise out of such precise and realistic thinking that they're extremely sound.

It so often happens that somebody says 'change your life' and you repaint your car rather than re-wire the engine.

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

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

America has a hold on imaginations that no other country does. I think that is partly because it is an immigrant country and there is still a kind of innocence in America that translates very well everywhere in the world.

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, undimmed by familiarity and ready to be transformed. That is why the best trips, like the best love affairs, never really end.