Top 539 Quotes & Sayings by Douglas Coupland - Page 3

If nothing else, we simply get used to being alive.

With Google I'm starting to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. People in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless.

Sometimes failure isn't an opportunity in disguise, it's just you.

On TV people look at your hair and then they look at your skin, and then they look at your clothes, and by the time they're listening to what you're saying, you're off the screen.

Is there anything in the world more annoyingly creepy than an unspoken dress code?

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

The future and eternity are two entirely different things.

If I think too much about all of those Chinese factories where all the stuff in a Wal-Mart is made, I get that woozy feeling you get when you see ducks covered in crude oil.

Feeling unique is no indication of uniqueness.

Star Trek characters never go shopping.

A man in a bookstore buys a book on loneliness and every woman in the store hits on him. A woman buys a book on loneliness and the store clears out.

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.

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

My house. It's kind of eccentric. It's two decades worth of accumulated personal projects. Yeah, it is pretty dense in my house.

The person who needs the other person the least in a relationship is the stronger member.

Everybody has basically the same family, it's just reconfigured slightly differently from one to the next.

People will always choose more money over more sex.

Once you see someone lose it, you can never look at them the same way again.

In Canada, we're happy to provide a safe haven for next-door neighbors in the middle of a marital dispute. And if anyone trips while crossing the border, we're happy to set their broken bones for free.

Christmas makes everything twice as sad.

Sometimes it feels as if everything in life is just something we haul into the grave.

Any passion to collect has some meaning behind it.

I want pills called September 10. You take one and your mind feels like the 11th never happened.

Only losers make decisions when things are bad. The time to rejig your life is the time when it's seemingly smooth.

If you're not a tree hugger, then you're a what, a tree hater?

Clowns drink to blot out the ravages of terrifying children for a living.

Forget about being world famous, it's hard enough just getting the automatic doors at the supermarket to acknowledge our existence.

We need to be around our families not because we have so many shared experiences to talk about, but instead because they know precisely which subjects to avoid.

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.

Nobody likes being told who or what they are.

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.

Tofu hot dogs are actually scarier than real hot dogs. It's like wanting the worst possible meat product without even the thrill of it actually being meat.

New York is a theme park for people with IQs over 108.

We live in an era with no historical precedents. History is no longer useful as a tool in helping us understand current changes.

God is what keeps us together after the love is gone.

I think most people either forget or don't know that Microsoft only hires people with I.Q.'s well over 130.

Life always kills you in the end, but first it prevents you from getting what you want.

Depression is when you have lots of love, but no one's taking.

I know it's not cat food, but what exactly is it that they put inside of tinned ravioli?

I think money is due for some sort of collapse. People are going to realize that money has a half-life, like radioactive elements.

In my mind, I've always checked out in 2037; that's always been my expiration date. I'll be 75.

I'm agoraphobic. I can't deal with crowds.

I think half the people who get married now have met online. If I think about all the people in my life who married - they met online, online, online. And it makes sense if you think about it, because you fill out this form of 35 things that really define you and - bam - look, you've got two people who match. It works.

Figure out what it is in life you don't do well, and then don't do it.

Make your goals big and broad enough so that they never become answered prayers and boomerang to curse you.

Fate is for losers.

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.

Telling people they look relaxed makes them look relaxed.

It's weird when people start sentences with 'frankly' - as if their other sentences don't count.

When future archaeologists dig up the remains of California, they're going to find all of those gyms their scary-looking gym equipment, and they're going to assume that we were a culture obsessed with torture.

Thinking you're immortal is weirdly similar to being immortal.

You can never become rich unless you like rich people.

I like doing radio because it's so intimate. The moment people hear your voice, you're inside there heads, not only that, you're in there laying eggs.

It also allows you to look as though you're not particularly from the present, future or past, either.

Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure.

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.

We want our idols to be dead because it makes death a much less scary place.

People say if you're doing an art project, that's different from a book, but I honestly don't see it. I try and try, and I just don't.

The universe hands you opportunities for a while, and if you don't take them, the universe says to itself, 'Oh I see, this person doesn't like opportunities' and stops giving them to you.

Ten commandments yet seven deadly sins: conflict?