Douglas Coupland - People Quotes

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

Douglas Coupland
And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened.

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
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
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.

Douglas Coupland
Here's my theory about meetings and life: the three things you can't fake are erections, competence and creativity. That's why meetings become toxic — they put uncreative people in a situation in which they have to be something they can never be. And the more effort they put into concealing their inabilities, the more toxic the meeting becomes.

Douglas Coupland
McJob: A low-pay, low-prestige, low-dignity, low-benefit, no-future job in the service sector. Frequently considered a satisfying career choice by people who have never held one.

Douglas Coupland
Unhappy endings are just as important as happy endings. They're an efficient way of transmitting vital Darwinian information. Your brain needs them to make maps of the world, maps that let you know what sorts of people and situations to avoid.

Douglas Coupland
Too much free time is certainly a monkey's paw in disguise. Most people can't handle a structureless life.

Douglas Coupland
Yesirree, life sure is good.
Yesirree, nothing could possibly go wrong with everything being so good.
But of course, in books, good is boring.
Good is a snoozer.
Good makes people close the covers and never reopen them.
But you know—you'd think that just once when life finally started going my way, that cosmic writer out there would allow me and all of my co-characters to simply enjoy things for just a little while. I mean, what kind of a prick would end a book just when everything's going so well?

Douglas Coupland
ETHNOMAGNETISM: The tendency of young people to live in emotionally demonstrative, more unrestrained ethnic neighborhoods: 'You wouldn't understand it there, mother-they hug where I live now.'

Douglas Coupland
Workshops and seminars are basically financial speed dating for clueless people.

Douglas Coupland
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.

Douglas Coupland
Good looking people with strong, fluoridated teeth get things handed to them on platters.

Douglas Coupland
Older staffers don't even bother coming in on weekends. Where is the sleep-crazed, Pepsi-fuelled one-point-oh tech environment that can only be created by having no green vegetables, no sex and no life?
Cowboy said, I miss the greed of the 1990s bubble.
John Doe said, I miss the possibility of unearned wealth.
Bree said, I miss the possibility of doing something Apple, something one-point-oh.
Evil Mark said, I miss people having Hot Wheels tracks set up in their cubicles.
Gord-O walked into the pod. You can't miss the nineties, because you weren't there. They were great. Too bad you screwed-up twits missed out on the party.

Douglas Coupland
Truly modern citizens are both charismatic and can only respond to other people with charisma. To survive, people need to become self-branding charisma robots. Yet, ironically, society mocks and punishes people who aspire to that state.

Douglas Coupland
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.

Douglas Coupland
I curled myself into a ball and cried quietly, doing that thing that only young people can do, namely, feeling sorry for myself. Once you're past thirty you lose that ability; instead of feeling sorry for yourself you turn bitter.

Douglas Coupland
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.

Douglas Coupland
Books turn people into isolated individuals, and once that's happened, the road only grows rockier. Books wire you to want to be Steve McQueen, but the world wants you to be SMcQ23667bot@hotmail.com.

Douglas Coupland
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.

Douglas Coupland
Life is boring. People are vengeful. Good things always end. We do so many things and we don't know why, and if we do find out why, it's decades later and knowing why doesn't matter any more.

Douglas Coupland
... I realized that once people are broken in certain ways they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one.

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

Douglas Coupland