Douglas Coupland Quotes

Lottery tickets are a surtax on desperation.

I want to see books taken out of historical time and placed into a different timeline, such as evolutionary or geological time, as a means of putting the human experience in context.

We are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.

TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public.

All families are psychotic. Everybody has basically the same family - it's just reconfigured slightly different from one to the next.

Failure is authentic, and because it's authentic, it's real and genuine, and because of that, it's a pure state of being.

People are pretty forgiving when it comes to other people's families. The only family that ever horrifies you is your own.

If cats were double the size they are now, they'd probably be illegal.

I don't think anyone ever gets over anything in life; they merely get used to it.

It's difficult to speak with beautiful people. No matter how hard you try to pretend otherwise, you still want them to like you.

The real killers in the business world aren't the ones who aim for the top, it's the ones who aim for two notches below the top.

Telling people they look relaxed makes them look relaxed.

In our heads we're all about 33 years old.

Your brain forms roughly 10,000 new cells every day, but unless they hook up to preexisting cells with strong memories, they die. Serves them right.

In the same way you can never go backward to a slower computer, you can never go backward to a lessened state of connectedness.

SAFETY NET-ISM: The belief that there will always be a financial and emotional safety net to buffer life's hurts. Usually parents.

You fear that if you lower your guard for even one second your whole world will disintegrate into chaos

I like the present. I'm always interested in new ideas, and what's happening. I'm not nostalgic.

With Google I'm starting to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. People in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless.

Thinking you're immortal is weirdly similar to being immortal.

I think the killers get far too much attention.

Never loan a book to someone if you expect to get it back. Loaning books is the same as giving them away.

A man in a bookstore buys a book on loneliness and every woman in the store hits on him. A woman buys a book on loneliness and the store clears out.

Below a certain point, if you keep too quiet, people no longer see you as thoughtful or deep; they simply forget you.

I find it hard to believe that human beings are the crowning achievement of life on earth. Something better than us has to come along.

Tofu hot dogs are actually scarier than real hot dogs. It's like wanting the worst possible meat product without even the thrill of it actually being meat.

It's never felt more Canadian to be Canadian than it does now.

Most people have no idea how to politely answer a phone. The English do, and it's been their only major business advantage for the past two centuries.

CONSENSUS TERRORISM:The process that decides in- office attitudes and behavior.

Americans are a quarter of a billion people who have almost nothing in common except for the fact they've been told they have lots in common.

Every human being you see in the course of a day has a problem that's sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar.

Gap clothing allows you to look like you're from nowhere and anywhere.

Purchased experiences don't count.

You can't fake competence, creativity, or sexual arousal.

On TV people look at your hair and then they look at your skin, and then they look at your clothes, and by the time they're listening to what you're saying, you're off the screen.

Star Trek characters never go shopping.

You've seen what you've seen; you've felt what you've felt. Ideology is for people who don't trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world.

If you don't have a spiritual practice in place when times are good, you can't expect to suddenly develop one during a moment of crisis.

I say ‘Uhmm...’ a lot. I mentioned this to Karla and she says it’s a CPU word. It means you’re assembling data in your head - spooling.

Give parents the tiniest of confidences and they'll use them as crowbars to jimmy you open and rearrange your life with no perspective.

I want pills called September 10. You take one and your mind feels like the 11th never happened.

With the first drink comes the truth, with the second drink comes wishful thinking, and with the third drink come the lies.

Nobody cares about worthiness. People care about what is real inside of you.

Jason said, "Yes. Gerard T. Giraffe." What does the 'T' stand for?" 'The.

Dreams don't come true. Dreams die. Dreams get compromised. Dreams end up dealing meth in a booth at the back of the Olive Garden. Dreams choke to death on bay leaves. Dreams get spleen cancer.

Chronocanine Envy: Sadness experienced when one realized that, unlike one's dog, one cannot live only in the present tense. As Kierkegaard said, "Life must be lived forward.

Life always kills you in the end, but first it prevents you from getting what you want.

I guess the thing about exposing your heart is that people may not even notice it. Like a flop movie. Or they'll borrow your heart and they'll forget to return it to you.

Is that all time is - our perception of how quickly it does or does not pass?

Venice Beach: proof of the biological impossibility of imagining a person being simultaneously good-looking and poor.