We may be joined these days more by the questions we have in common than by the answers we share.

I wanted to bring the book out right now because I think anyone who cares about Tibet knew there would be disturbances in the run up to the Olympics [2008]. Many Tibetans feel it's their last chance to broadcast their suffering and frustration and pain to the world before the Olympics take place and China is accepted as a modern nation and the world forgets about Tibet.

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.

Every day there are small moments when we have a choice: will we take in more stuff, or just clear our minds out for a bit?

Suffering is a privilege. It moves us toward thinking of essential things and shakes us out of complacency. Calamity cracks you open, moves you to change your ways.

Writing should ... be as spontaneous and urgent as a letter to a lover, or a message to a friend who has just lost a parent ... and writing is, in the end, that oddest of anomalies: an intimate letter to a stranger

Travel, for me, is a little bit like being in love, because suddenly all your senses are at the setting marked “on.