"For many years -- for all my life, really -- I've been travelling the world looking at how different countries and people try to make sense of the multicultural mixes we're all becoming. One of the unusual and potent things about the present moment is that the very issue that so many cultures and cities are facing is exactly the same one that more and more individuals such as myself are confronting: How to fashion a sense of self or home when all the traditional co-ordinates are gone? And how to make a peace among the disparate, often competing, cultures inside of us? How, in short, to begin to create a sense of direction -- and foundation -- when the world is spinning around us at the speed of light?"