We have to earn silence, then, to work for it: to make it not an absence but a presence; not emptiness but repletion.-- Pico Iyer, "The Eloquent Sounds of Silence", Time, January 1993
My spouse and I became aware of Pico Iyer when we went to see Amy Tan at a local university. The program consisted of Pico Iyer sitting on stage with Amy Tan having a discussion. The emphasis was on him drawing her out with good questions; it was quite pleasant and interesting.
Now we have started to notice his name mentioned or quotes by him. I thought this quote from Dictionary.com Word for the Day was a great use of word that can also mean "eating too much." I was pleasantly surprized when I realized it was quoting Pico Iyer. I can't remember all the other instances but we have become quite taken with him.
I don't remember who was was quoting him in this passage that I sent to my daughter who was planning to go to Europe for summer school for a month.

In his seminal essay, "Why We Travel," Pico Iyer writes, "All good trips are about being carried out of yourself and deposited in the midst of terror and wonder." Travel stretches us so that our mental clothes don't fit anymore; it reminds us over and over that the anchoring assumptions of our youth lose their hold in the global sea. Travel to strange places can make us strangers to ourselves, but it can also introduce us to all the exhilarating possibilities of a new self in a new world.

Postscript: I recently heard about his book, The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama and found out there was this interview on one of my favorite shows, Fresh Air from WHYY, on March 26, 2008.