[The Dalai Lama] told me some years ago, "I've made every concession to China, and I've been as open and tolerant as I could, and still things get worse in Tibet." If you look at it from one point of view, as he himself says, his monastic position of forbearance and nonviolence hasn't reaped any benefits. And yet, he's thinking in terms of the long term, of centuries.

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.

Traveling is a way to reverse time, to a small extent, and make a day last a year - or at least forty-five hours - and traveling is an easy way of surrounding ourselves, as in childhood, with what we cannot understand.

A holy day, after all, is a day for considering everything you otherwise think too little about.

He [The Dalai Lama] has made it his mission to say, "We can't afford to squabble over minor differences, we have to concentrate on what we have in common, our common mission, our common culture - and indeed what we have in common with the rest of the world."

The less conscious one is of being a writer, the better the writing.

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