Douglas Coupland Quotes

225 Sourced Quotes

Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.

Douglas Coupland
"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?"

Douglas Coupland
You have to admit, half the people who work here are mildly autistic; poor social skills, the ability to obsess on anything numerical or repetitive, the odd outfits, the paranoia and the sense of continually being judged and measured.

Douglas Coupland
We barely have enough time to figure out who we are and then we become bitter and isolated as we age.

Douglas Coupland
Preemptive boringness. Being one-dimensional is the most satisfying method of coping with out-of-control people - with any situation that's out of control … Don't let people know the ideas you love, the games you've played, the places you've visited in your mind. Keep your treasure to yourself.

Douglas Coupland
The only way to the top is killing and greed. Okay, I'm kidding. But killing helps.

Douglas Coupland
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.

Douglas Coupland
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.

Douglas Coupland
Time, Baby - so much, so much time left until the end of my life - sometimes I go crazy at how slowly time passes yet how quickly my body ages. But I shouldn't allow myself to think like this. I have to remind myself that time only frightens me when I think of having to spend it alone. Sometimes I scare myself with how many of my thoughts revolve around making me feel better about sleeping alone in a room.

Douglas Coupland
I was Cheryl Anway- that has to count for something.

Douglas Coupland
Being alive is just a brief technicality.

Douglas Coupland
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.

Douglas Coupland
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.

Douglas Coupland
Your inability to achieve solitude makes you settle for substandard relationships.

Douglas Coupland
Ask whatever challenges dead and thoughtless beliefs.

Douglas Coupland
A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age... pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives. They don't want to be who they are any more. They want out. This list includes Thurston Howell the Third, Ann-Margret, the cat members of Rent, Václav Havel, space shuttle astronauts and Snuffleupagus. It's universal.

Douglas Coupland
Fake yuppie experiences that you had to spend money on, like white water rafting or elephant rides in Thailand don't count. I want to hear some small moment from your life that proves you're really alive.

Douglas Coupland
If you want to get close to somebody, you have to tell him or her something intimate about yourself. They'll tell you something intimate in return, and if you keep this going, maybe you'll end up in love.

Douglas Coupland
Fame without the money to insulate you from it is one of the most wretched human conditions possible.

Douglas Coupland
Life is dull, but it could be worse and it could be better. We accept that a corporation determines our life's routines. It's the trade-off so that we don't have to be chronically unemployed creative types, and we know it. When we were younger, we'd at least make a show of not being fooled and leave copies of Adbusters on our desktops. After a few years it just doesn't matter. You trawl for jokes or amusingly diversionary. wav files. You download music. A new project comes along, then endures a slow-motion smothering at the hands of meetings. All ideas feel stillborn. The air smells like five hundred sheets of paper.
And then it's another day.

Douglas Coupland
Decade Blending: In clothing: the indiscriminate combination of two or more items from various decades to create a personal mood: Sheila = Mary Quant earrings (1960s) + cork wedgie platform shoes (1970s) + black leather jacket (1950s and 1980s).

Douglas Coupland
You've had most of your important memories by the time you're thirty. After that, memory becomes water overflowing into an already full cup.

Douglas Coupland
Sometimes you can't realize you're in a bad mood until another person enters your orbit.

Douglas Coupland
Hip flasks are the juice machines of the alcohol world — everyone has one and it never gets used.

Douglas Coupland
Meeting Anna-Louise was like finding a stranger's shopping list on the mall flooor and realising there are other, more interesting diets than your own. It was the first time I ever felt incomplete.

Douglas Coupland
I'd take a helicopter up and throw microwave ovens down on the Taco Bell.

Douglas Coupland
Truth be told, John said, the one thing in this world I want more than anything else is a great big crowbar, to jimmy myself open and take whatever creature that's sitting inside and shake it clean like a rug and then rinse it in a cold, clear lake like up in Oregon, and then I want to put it under the sun to let it heal and dry and grow and sit and come to consciousness again with a clear and quiet mind.

Douglas Coupland
Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we've missed the chance to have had people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounded like a quiet tragedy.

Douglas Coupland
The problem is, after a week of intense googling, we've started to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. God must feel that way all the time. I think people in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless.

Douglas Coupland
Remember how, back in 1990, if you used a cellphone in public you looked like a total asshole? We're all assholes now.

Douglas Coupland