In an age of distraction, nothing can feel more luxurious than paying attention.

I would say that by virtue of transforming politics, [Dalai Lama] is in fact easily underestimated.

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

In the past, Ive visited remote places - North Korea, Ethiopia, Easter Island - partly as a way to visit remote states of mind: remote parts of myself that I wouldnt ordinarily explore.

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

Dalai Lama was leading his country during the rigors of World War II, he was in Beijing for a year in 1954; he was up against Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai from the time that he was fifteen. So he's no newcomer or naive when it comes to politics.

I think that mass communications as well as mass travel have made the whole world available to us in ways that they haven't been. As with any kind of freedom, the more of it that one has the greater the need for limit and restraint. But I think that it's a nice challenge to be saddled with.