Karan Mahajan Quotes

Travel early and travel often. Live abroad, if you can. Understand cultures other than your own. As your understanding of other cultures increases, your understanding of yourself and your own culture will increase exponentially.

History … liberated me from a past that was no longer relevant. I was ready to explore the American side of my hyphenated psyche. I'm still doing it

I thought I knew everything when I came to Rome, but I soon found I had everything to learn.

As a kid, I used to dream about airplanes before I ever flew in one. I really knew, when I started photographing, I wanted it to be a way of knowing different cultures, not just in other countries but in this country, too, and I knew I wanted to enter other lives. I knew I wanted to be a voyeur.

But what I'm very interested in, whether it's writing, whether it's hosting a show, whether it's cooking food, I'm just into the discussions of identity, culture and the politics of culture.

When you get to see the world, it changes you. You realise that there are all kinds of people out there.

I had a hard time convincing students that they were going to North Africa to understand the North Africans, not to understand themselves.

Every country I go to, I learn a little bit more about myself.

A man who has not been in Italy, is always conscious of an inferiority.

Living gives you a better understanding of life. I would hope that my characters have become deeper and more rounded personalities. Wider travels have given me considerably greater insight into how cultural differences affect not only people, but politics and art.

When I made the decision to go to Europe, a lot of people questioned it. The first six months I was there even I was questioning it, but I think I learned a lot more about myself in that six months than I have my whole life.

When I went to Sweden, I sort of found out who I was.

Colombian culture has had a huge influence on me and taught me a different way of looking at things - I was always different from the people I went to school with, and I learned to embrace that.

I think by embracing your heritage and your history, it just serves you so much more, and you become a deeper and more powerful person by embracing them.

I grew up surrounded by all types of cultures - French, Indian, Arabic - a melting pot of cultures, sounds, foods, people, and religions. It opened my eyes early, and I'm grateful for that. It's not about success in one area; it's about exploring the world musically and spending time in those places whenever you can.

When you travel your first discovery is that you do not exist.

I like the distance that Europe gives me. Also if I stayed in America I'd be a full-time politician and have no time for writing, which is why I went to Europe to live in 1961.

By remaining constrained in one's environment or country or family, one has little chance of being other than the original prescription. By leaving, one gains a perspective, a distance of both space and time, which is essential for writing about family or home, in any case.

Travel spins us round in two ways at once: It shows us the sights and values and issues that we might ordinarily ignore; but it also, and more deeply, shows us all the parts of ourselves that might otherwise grow rusty.

I was in my early thirties writing about my early twenties, so there was this way of seeing my younger self from enough of a distance to have perspective but also not to feel that I had to protect myself. My dreams for myself then would have undersold myself in a way.

I really like to discover a new culture, a new country, a new rhythm of living. I really, really like that. I think that's the most enriching thing, for my nature, because I like the psychology of people.

New situations inspire new thoughts. Here is the benefit of travelling, much more than in mere sight-seeing. We lose ourselves in the streets of our own city, and go abroad to find ourselves.

I love that sometimes we need to go to the opposite side of the world to realize assumptions that we didn't even know we had and realize that the opposite may also be true.

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next to find ourselves.