Pico Iyer Quotes

My father came from Germany. My mom came from Venezuela. My father's culturally German, but his father was Japanese. I was raised in New York and spent two years in Rio. My parents met at the University of Southern Mississippi, and they had me there, and then we moved to New York. I'm not very familiar with Mississippi.

I'm an immigrant - I've got to be in the city: London, Vienna, or Rome, but always a city.

If you go to America or London, you will see Indians shining.

Western countries in particular can today no longer be separated from Muslim societies, because they have them within themselves. They are themselves internally globalized.

It is my great good luck the words I use are English words, which means I live in a very old nation of open borders; a rich, deep, multi-layered, promiscuous universe, infused with Latin, German, French, Greek, Arabic and countless other tongues.

We live in a multi-cultural society far more open to international ideas. If you'd told me 20 years ago I'd drive through Bury and see someone sitting outside a cafe drinking a latte, I'd have laughed. In fact, I wouldn't have even known what a latte was.

The whole story of migration and what that has done in interconnecting the planet is obviously something I've written about a lot.

It could be argued that, in Thailand, many foreigners have come and gone, and the number of people who are considered to be Thai have traveled abroad in a great number.

Forty-five years ago, when I was 18, I came to San Francisco by boat and took two weeks to get here. I had a great impression. I think San Francisco is the welcoming gate for people from Asia.

No, I'm not a French designer either. I'm from nowhere. I'm a European, old European is all I am.

Emigration, forced or chosen, across national frontiers or from village to metropolis, is the quintessential experience of our time.

I am an American citizen born in Kuwait of Egyptian parents. I grew up in Great Britain, Malaysia, and Egypt and have lived in the United States since 1965, when I was seventeen.

The Indo-Canadian community has been a microcosm of the people of Indian origin living abroad besides reflecting India's diversity.

My dad's from Zimbabwe, and my mom is Danish, Irish, and Norwegian, so I have influences from a lot of different places.

My family is a Jewish Iranian family, but I was born in Turkey and raised in Italy. So it's a very mixed background.

I am not someone who believes we should build a fence around our country but I do believe there ought to be some fairness with respect to the rules of this globalization.

What I wonder is what would happen in California, say, if all the Mexicans left from one day to the next?

Miami is one of the great cultural melting pots in the world. I love working and living here.

You can't stop what comes into a country, you can be influenced, but you can't stop it, you shouldn't, because it makes all the others interesting, we all get muddled up together, and produce something that belongs to everyone.

The world, whether we like it or not, will become more and more borderless.

The world has become more complex as technology and easy travel mixes cultures without homogenizing them.

America has always imported history.

The world is getting more connected through technology and travel. Cuisines are evolving. Some people are scared of globalization, but I think people will always take pride in cultural heritage.

My father's from Australia and my mother was born in India, but she's actually Tibetan. I was born in Katmandu, lived there until I was eight, and then moved to Australia with my mother and father. So yeah, I'm very mixed up, been to many different schools.

I'm fascinated by how ethnic communities have assimilated into massive capitalist environments.