I loved the quiet places in Kyoto, the places that held the world within a windless moment. Inside the temples, Nature held her breath. All longing was put to sleep in the stillness, and all was distilled into a clean simplicity. The smell of woodsmoke, the drift of incense; a procession of monks in black-and-gold robes, one of them giggling in a voice yet unbroken; a touch of autumn in the air, a sense of gathering rain.

Arto Paasilinna The Year of the Hare
Frederick Prokosch The Asiatics
Donald Richie The Inland Sea
Nicolas Rothwell Wings of the Kite-Hawk
Huston Smith Tales of Wonder
Lawrence Weschler A Wanderer in the Perfect City
Natsume Soseki The Gate


Notes. Asked if he feels rooted and accepted as a foreigner (regarding his current life in Japan) Iyer replies:

"Japan is therefore an ideal place because I never will be a true citizen here and will always be an outsider however long I live here and however well I speak the language. "

In his essay on dreaming in the New York Review of Books (21 March 2013) he also comments (regarding Paris):

"I went there in life not long ago to try to chase the connection down but of course my search yielded nothing.

An essayist for Time since 1986 he also publiPico Iyers regularly in Harper's The New York Review of Books The New York Times and many other publications. He is the author of numerous books on crossing cultures including Video Night in Kathmandu The Lady and the Monk and The Global Soul.