Douglas Coupland Quotes

Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself.

Life's cruelest irony.

There's much to be said for feeling numb.

Time passes more quickly. You eat less, and because numbness encourages laziness, you do fewer things, good or bad, and the world's probably a better place for it.

Big companies are like marching bands.

Even if half the band is playing random notes, it still sounds kind of like music. The concealment of failure is built into them.

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

We decided that the French could never write user-friendly software because they're so rude.

When we constantly ask for miracles, we're unraveling the fabric of the world.

A world of continuous miracles would not be a world, it would be a cartoon.

Cloning is great. If God made the original, then making copies should be fine.

The modern economy isn't about the redistribution of wealth - it's about the redistribution of time.

Earth was not built for six billion people all running around and being passionate about things. The world was built for about two million people foraging for roots and grubs.

When future archaeologists dig up the remains of California, they're going to find all of those gyms their scary-looking gym equipment, and they're going to assume that we were a culture obsessed with torture.

Life is boring. People are vengeful. Good things always end. We do so many things and we don’t know why, and if we do find out why, it’s decades later and knowing why doesn’t matter any more.

Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure.

Royalty is either going to do very well with cloning, or it's going to disappear completely.

I think that in the future, clocks won't say three o'clock anymore.

They'll just get right to the point and rename three o'clock 'Pepsi.

Making eye contact with adults while dressed as a clown is risky.

Try not thinking of peeling an orange.

Try not imagining the juice running down your fingers, the soft inner part of the peel. The smell. Try and you can't. The brain doesn't process negatives.

Adventure without risk is Disneyland.

Birds are a miracle because they prove to us there is a finer, simpler state of being which we may strive to attain.

Strange how when you're young you have no memories...Then one day you wake up and BOOM, memories overpower all else in your life, forever making the present moment seem sad and unable to compete with a glorious past that now has a life of its own.

...we're told by TV and Reader's Digest that a crisis will trigger massive personal change--and that those big changes will make the pain worthwhile. But from what he could see, big change almost never happens. People simply feel lost. They have no idea what to say or do or feel or think. they become messes and tend to remain messes.

Make your goals big and broad enough so that they never become answered prayers and boomerang to curse you.

Human beings are the only animal that thinks they change who they are simply by moving to a different place. Birds migrate, but it's not quite the same thing.

And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened.

You wait for fate to bring about the changes in life which you should be bringing about by yourself.

Every single moment is a coincidence.

You guys just wait and see. We'll stand taller than these mountains. We'll bare open our hearts for the world to grab. We'll see lights where there was dimness. We'll testify together to what we have seen and felt. Life will go on--all of us--crawling; stumbling, falling perhaps. But we will be the strong ones. Our hearts will shine brightly.

Most of us have only two or three genuinely interesting moments in our lives; the rest is filler.

You know, I think the people I feel saddest for are the ones who once knew what profoundness was, but who lost or became numb to the sensation of wonder, who felt their emotions floating away and just didn't care. I guess that's what's scariest: not caring about the loss.

There are three things we cry for in life: things that are lost, things that are found, and things that are magnificent.

Figure out what it is in life you don't do well, and then don't do it.

Most people can't handle a structureless life.

Letting go of randomness is one of the hardest decisions a person can make.

Good looking people with strong, fluoridated teeth get things handed to them on platters.

I curled myself into a ball and cried quietly, doing that thing that only young people can do, namely, feeling sorry for myself. Once you're past thirty you lose that ability; instead of feeling sorry for yourself you turn bitter.

Here's my theory about meetings and life: the three things you can't fake are erections, competence and creativity.

My secret is that I need God—that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.

You can't get mad at weather because weather's not about you. Apply that lesson to most other aspects of life.

You pretend to be more eccentric than you actually are because you worry you are an interchangeable cog.

Their talk was endless, compulsive, and indulgent, sometimes sounding like the remains of the English language after having been hashed over by nuclear war survivors for a few hundred years.

Salad bars are like a restaurant's lungs. They soak up the impurities and bacteria in the environment, leaving you with much cleaner air to enjoy.

Forget about being world famous, it's hard enough just getting the automatic doors at the supermarket to acknowledge our existence.

Here's what I think: the five most unattractive traits in people are cheapness, clinginess, neediness, unwillingness to change and jealousy. Jealousy is the worst, and by far the hardest to conceal.

Starved for affection, terrified of abandonment, I began to wonder if sex was really just an excuse to look deeply into another human being's eyes.

You know what the best thing is about the end of the day? Tomorrow, it starts all over again.

If you're not a tree hugger, then you're a what, a tree hater?

If human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween.

In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in sentences that end before finishing. We sleep heavily because we need to ask so many questions as we dream alone. We bump into others and feel bashful at recognizing souls so similar to ourselves.

what I remember is the silence in spite of the noise. In my head it might just as well have been a snowy day in the country.

It's very strange that most people don't care if their knowledge of their family history only goes back three generations.