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.

Writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger.

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

As soon as I'm on the road, I see, often palpably, that I know nothing at all, which is always a great liberation.

For more and more of us, home has less to do with a piece of soil than a piece of soul.

From the beginning, I've stressed that home is something internal, invisible, portable, especially for those of us with roots in many physical places; we have to root ourselves in our passions, our values and our deepest friends. My home, I've always felt, lies in the songs and novels that I love, in the wife and mother that I'm never far away from, in the monastery to which I've been returning for 25 years.

Going nowhere isn’t about turning your back on the world; it’s about stepping away now and then so that you can see the world more clearly and love it more deeply.