I suddenly realized I was racing around so much, I could never catch up with my life

A lack of affiliation may mean a lack of accountability, and forming a sense of commitment can be hard without a sense of community. Displacement can encourage the wrong kinds of distance, and if the nationalism we see sparking up around the globe arises from too narrow and fixed a sense of loyalty, the internationalism that's coming to birth may reflect too roaming and undefined a sense of belonging.

I'm one of those perverse people who likes being alone. I always took myself to be a community of one. That's what I am comfortable with.

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.

Writing of every kind is a way to wake oneself up and keep as alive as when one has just fallen in love.

The central paradox of the machines that have made our lives so much brighter, quicker, longer and healthier is that they cannot teach us how to make the best use of them; the information revolution came without an instruction manual.

I think of the Dalai Lama as a doctor of the mind offering medicine and specific counsel and cures in the way a great doctor would.