Douglas Coupland Quotes
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Ethan is annoyed with all of these dumb campaigns that indoctrinate millions of people into thinking they’re tough-guy free spirits when, in fact, there’s probably much to be said for following and, in any event, the food chain isn’t structured to encompass millions of non-followers.
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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.
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You can get a subjective and highly factual dossier on most anyone in the public realm almost instantly. It's why publishers don't worry about author photos any more; people just Google a person and get on with things.
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Historical Slumming: The act of visiting locations such as diners, smokestack industrial sites, rural village - locations where time appears to have been frozen many years back - so as to experience relief when one returns back to 'the present.'
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The person who needs the other person the least in a relationship is the stronger member.
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What if God exists except it turns out he doesn't really like people very much?
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If someone decides to be a musician now, it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it, it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now, there is no hope for money at the end of it.
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We're rapidly approaching a world comprised entirely of jail and shopping.
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My father has never once asked me a question, any question. There's a freedom that came from that. It allowed me to create my own way of thinking.
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Life always kills you in the end, but first it prevents you from getting what you want.
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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.
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For whatever reason, I tend to get reporters who are maybe in the middle of intense therapy, and they turn what's supposed to be a professional interview into therapy for themselves.
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Flying dreams mean that you're doing the right thing with your life.
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Nobody believes the identities we've made for ourselves. I feel like everybody in the world is fake now - as though people had true cores once, but hucked them away and replaced them with something more attractive but also hollow.
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People like that woman make it clear just how asinine it is to believe that human beings have some kind of in-built universal sense of goodness. These days I think that everybody's just one spit away from being a mall bomber.
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'Why are we drinking Zima? It’s beyond irony. It’s not funny or anything. It’s just gross. Why not just serve us jugs of Hitler’s piss instead?''Drinking Zima is something Douglas Coupland would make a character do.''To what end?''It’d be a device that would allow him to locate the characters in time and a specific sort of culture.'
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What's the point of being efficient if you're only leading an efficiently blank life?
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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.
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'We call Jasmine's room 'The Harem,' a sexy place, about which Dan never complained, even though his own possessions, his laptop PC and briefcase, for example, looked crazy in the environment, invasive and overcomplex, like Stealth bombers in SmurfWorld.'
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In the future, IKEA will become an ever more spiritual sanctuary. In the future, your dream life will increasingly look like Google street view. Everyone will be feeling the same way as you, and there's some comfort to be found there.
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Twinkies are more natural than most TV-interview shows.
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Bleeding Ponytail: An elderly sold out baby boomer who pines for hippie or pre-sellout days.
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Sometimes I wonder if the world is too interesting and too boring at the same time.
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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.