The recipe to an unhappy life in Japan is to want to be Japanese if you are not. Anyone who wants to penetrate the country is setting themselves up for tears and disappointment.
Tags: tears, disappointment, you, life

Other Quotes by "Pico Iyer"

In barely one generation, we've moved from exulting in the time-saving devices that have so expanded our lives to trying to get away from them - often in order to make more time. The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug.
Tags: trying, more, generation, time
The more ways we have to connect, the more many of us seem desperate to unplug.
Tags: many, desperate, us, more
I've never meditated in my life. I don't practice yoga nor any religion. I'm a tourist on the realm of stillness.
Tags: never, my-life, religion, life
In the two-room flat where I live in Japan, I try to take time every day to step away from the bombardment of e-mails and opportunities and papers around my desk, for an hour, and just sit on our 30-inch terrace in the sun, reading something sustaining, whether 'The Age of Innocence' or the latest by Colm Toibin.
Tags: sun, day, age, time
In financial terms, my sense is that the distribution of wealth, unequal as it is, is self-perpetuating, and, especially in a linked and accelerating world, the rich get ever more quickly richer while the poor get ever more speedily poorer.
Tags: poor, wealth, rich, world
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