Dalai Lama is very interested in learning from and sharing tips with people in other traditions, but he always stresses that we shouldn't underestimate the important differences between them.

The beauty of being foreign is that it snaps you awake.

He [Dalai Lama] feels, and I feel, and everyone feels the suffering and frustration of the Tibetans who long for action, who long for a militant response. But, in some ways very few of those individuals have ever been in the position of being head of state.

Dalai Lama is taking a subtle and nuanced view of politics and he is thinking in terms of events well beyond our lifetime.

The more internationalism there is in the world, the more nationalism there will always be, as people feel scared of the Other streaming into their neighbourhood and don't always know where to lay their foundations in a world on the move.

Travel, in the superficial sense at least, is a good cure for loneliness. When you travel, especially in the third world, you quickly find that you get more friends than you know what to do with.

I think America the symbol and America the notion are still very different from America the nation. What's touching and almost regenerative is that whatever is happening in the reality of America, where there is a murder rate worse than Lebanon's and where there is so much homelessness and poverty, still America will be a shorthand throughout the world for everything that is young and modern and free.