Pico Iyer Quotes

People move around so much in the world, things get lost.

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

The simple fact of being a human being is you migrate. Many of us move from one place to the other. But even those who don't move, and you stay in the same city, if you were born in Manhattan 70 years ago, you're born in Des Moines 70 years ago, you've lived in the same place for 70 years, the city you live in today is unrecognizable.

I have worked in so many countries over the years that I must have moved house about 20 times.

I kinda grew up in different places. I was just from everywhere.

By the time I was seven, my mother and I had moved 13 times.

By the time I was three years old, I'd lived at 10 different addresses in six different countries.

After a certain age, you couldn't even say where you were from. You went someplace, and lived there. And then you went someplace else.

People around the world were moving from one place to another. No one was staying.

I moved to London with this really warped sense of expectation.

Sometimes I feel very alone. I am a bit of a nomad. Many people in sort of emerging countries, emerging economies, find themselves displaced. So there is that sense, and so I'm part of a whole, I think, group of displaced people.

The way our business is, the way it works out, we end up being residents of everywhere.

Whenever you move, I think you lose your history.

I've done a lot of things away from my homeland.

Traveling, you realize that differences are lost: each city takes to resembling all cities, places exchange their form, order, distances, a shapeless dust cloud invades the continents.

Oh, my family lived in 21 places before I was 17.

I moved south when I was 11 years old, moved to England. I've lived in all kinds of places, all parts of England.

I was born in Evanston, Illinois. I spent my elementary and part of my junior high school years in a D.C. suburb. And then I spent my high school years in Minnesota. And then I spent my college years in Colorado. And then I spent some time living in China. And then I spent three years in Vermont before moving down to Nashville.

Your people do not seem to like the place where they live and always want to be on the move going someplace else.

Because we moved so much, I was always having to adapt and work out the lay of the land. So I felt envious of those who did not have to try.

I literally have never lived anywhere longer than two years in my life. I never just stuck anywhere.

I see myself as a transient, not an immigrant.

I wanted to write an upbeat song where I could feel good about the fact that I've moved around so much and not sad about all the goodbyes I've had to face.

My dad didn't like staying in one place, so we moved around every year - to a new house, new town, new country.

We moved from place to place, and it was hard to adjust to different schools. But we made it.