Douglas Coupland Quotes
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Once you establish a look, and once everybody recognizes that look as your look, you never have to think about fashion again.
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In 2008 we came perilously close to killing money, exposing in the process how out of date money's infrastructure has become.
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Poverty Jet Set: A group of people given to chronic travelling at the expense of long-term job stability or a permenant residence. Tend to have doomed and extremely expensive phone call relationships with people named Serge or Ilyana. Tend to discuss frequent flyer programs at parties.
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We have to count. I want to be part of history. I want a Wikipedia page. I want Google hits. I don’t want to be just a living organism that comes and goes and leaves no trace on this planet.
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I miss the reference section at the library. I used to go there twice a week on missions. Now everywhere's a research library and I can't get an elitist kick from it any more.
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I told Ethan that I speak in an unrestricted manner to animals - things like, aren't you just the cutest little kitty... that kind of thing, which I wouldn't dream of doing to humans. Then I realized I wish I could.
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'What do lesbians have against capitalized letters?''Capitalization implies a hierarchy, that some letters are more special than others.'
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I'm agoraphobic. I can't deal with crowds.
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'Ethan, there has to be more to my life than this.''Why can't you just be happy as a shallow cartoon glyph of a human like everybody else here?'
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Those Catholics, they really nab you when you're young. They sear you. They sear you; they do.
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'A girl can’t control who will and who won’t fall in love with her, Ethan. And sometimes, when a nuisance person falls in love with you, it can be awfully… awkward.'
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Ask whatever challenges dead and thoughtless beliefs.
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Everybody past a certain age, regardless of how they look on the outside, pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.
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I mean five thousand years ago people emerge out of nowhere - sproing!- with brains and everything and begin wrecking the planet. You'd think we'd give the issue a little more thought than we do.
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What exactly is it that humans do that is specifically human? There has to be something. How odd it is for billions of people to be alive, yet not one of them is really quite sure of what makes people people.
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I think about how I think I know a person then 'poof!' I discover I only knew a cartoon version. Suddenly there's this fleshy, demanding, noisy creature in front of me, unknowable and just as lost as I am, and equally unable to remember that every soul in the world is hurting, not just themselves.
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Lists only spell out the things that can be taken away from us by moths and rust and thieves. If something is valuable, don't put it in a list. Don't even say the words.
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The thing about living in the 21st century is you can get to fortysomething and not have anyone major in your life die.
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'I have an idea. … If Ethan and Mark are so similar, we might as well arbitrarily assign them distinct personality traits. I know-Mark, from here on, you're to be called 'Evil Mark.''
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I think social and moral disengagement is repugnant.
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Sometimes it feels as if everything in life is just something we haul into the grave.
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Gap clothing allows you to look like you're from nowhere and anywhere.
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Is feeling nothing the inevitable result of believing in nothing? ...I thought it would be such a sick joke to have to remain alive for decades and not believe in or feel anything.
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I used to always think I had to have a reason to record my observations of the day, or even my emotions, but now I think simply being alive is more than enough reason.