A Quote by Pico Iyer
When I'm wandering around the Himalayas, most of the people that I see are Westerners from Germany, California, or the Netherlands, who are wearing sandals, Indian smocks, and are in search of enlightenment, antiquity, peace, and all the things they can't get in the west. Most of the people they meet are Nepali villagers in Lee jeans, Reeboks, and Madonna T-shirts who are looking for the paradise that they associate with Los Angeles - a paradise of material prosperity and abundance.
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Santa Barbara is a paradise; Disneyland is a paradise; the U.S. is a paradise. Paradise is just paradise. Mournful, monotonous, and superficial though it may be, it is paradise. There is no other.
Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way round, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise.
Prejudices are useless. Call Los Angeles any dirty name you like - Six Suburbs in Search of a City, Paradise with a Lobotomy, anything - but the fact remains that you are already living in it before you get there
I really enjoy watching people like Madonna, or Cher, or Barbra Streisand on the red carpet. I want to see people wearing exciting things that are different and to know that they're not just looking for the latest, most normal thing.
I'm wary of the whole Los Angeles scene. I'm a California kid, but there's a difference between California and Los Angeles. L.A. is urban. California is restorative.
I keep trying to tell people that Los Angeles is already the largest Indian city in the U.S., that there are Toltecs playing Little League baseball in Pasadena, Mayans making beds at the Marriott in Westwood, and Chichimecs driving buses in L.A. Los Angeles is a majority-Indian city.
I'm very stodgy. I'm always looking at old photos of California and Los Angeles, knowing that what I'm looking at is now full of houses. There used to be vacant lots in Los Angeles, now all taken up by three-storey boxes - it's all getting infilled.
The child in each of us Knows paradise. Paradise is home. Home as it was Or home as it should have been. Paradise is one's own place, One's own people, One's own world, Knowing and known, Perhaps even Loving and loved. Yet every child Is cast from paradise- Into growth and new community, Into vast, ongoing Change.
The loves that meet in Paradise shall cast out fear, And Paradise hath room for you and me and all.
I read American sagas (of the west) and I do not see people who went in search of material things. I see people who wrote down that what they sought was an escape from an old world which dictated their conscience and established their merit based on who their parents.
The fatal mistake we make is looking for a paradise that endures...This obsession with what lasts causes us to overlook many a fleeting paradise.
One feature about Los Angeles that I particularly love is the chance for association with all kinds of creative artists, a thing I never before have had. I certainly do love a number of the writers, the painters, the musicians, and the sculptors that I meet here. ... Next to the sunshine, I appreciate it the most of anything in California.
For me, Iran was paradise, and I believe it's a paradise still, but only if you don't have political problems. If you have a political problem, paradise turns into hell.
I still dwelled deep in my elected paradise--a paradise whose skies were the color of hell-flames--but still a paradise.
You're mistaken, Father. You were in paradise, but you didn't recognize it. It's the same with most people in this world; they seek suffering in the most joyous of places because they think they are unworthy of happiness.
I define success as a deep sense of peace, and we find the most peace when we live out our true calling and fulfill the purpose we were created for. History is filled with examples of people who had an abundance of material possessions but no peace because no matter how much stuff you have, there's not enough money in the world to fill the hole in your soul.
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