Douglas Coupland - Human Quotes

16 Sourced Quotes

View all Douglas Coupland Quotes
What is human behavior, except trying to prove that we're not animals?

Douglas Coupland
I think if human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn't life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don't they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you'd meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to - like talking to dogs.

Douglas Coupland
There is something about a monolithic tech culture like Microsoft that makes humans seriously rethink fundamental aspects of the relationship between their brains and their bodies – their souls and their ambitions; things and thoughts.

Douglas Coupland
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.

Douglas Coupland
When you grow older a dreadful, horrible sensation will come over you. It's called loneliness, and you think you know what it is now, but you don't. Here is a list of the symptoms, and don't worry - loneliness is the most universal sensation on the planet. Just remember one fact - loneliness will pass. You will survive and you will be a better human for it.

Douglas Coupland
It turns out that only twenty percent of human beings have a sense of irony — which means that eighty percent of the world takes everything at face value. I can't imagine anything worse than that. Okay, maybe I can, but imagine reading the morning newspaper and believing it all to be true on some level.

Douglas Coupland
I'm trying to feel more well adjusted than I really am, which is, I guess, the human condition.

Douglas Coupland
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.

Douglas Coupland
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.

Douglas Coupland
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.

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

Douglas Coupland
Our curse as humans is that we are trapped in time; our curse is that we are forced to interpret life as a series of events — a story — and when we can't figure out what our particular story is, we feel lost somehow.

Douglas Coupland
The New World isn't new anymore. The New World – the Americas – it's over. People don't have dominion over Nature. It's gone beyond that. Human beings and the world are now the same thing.

Douglas Coupland
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.

Douglas Coupland
PERSONALITY TITHE: A price paid for becoming a couple; previously amusing human beings become boring: 'Thanks for inviting us, but Noreen and I are going to look at flatware catalogs tonight. Afterward we're going to watch the shopping channel.

Douglas Coupland