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

To step away from the world isn't to draw back; it's actually a way to tune in.

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

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

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.

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

Like the moon on the water, in a way. When you confront a Zen master, what you're really seeing are not his limitations but yours.