Douglas Coupland: Give parents the tiniest of confidences and they'll...

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

hard-life achievement believe

My brain feels like a cool, deep lake.

Douglas Coupland

lakes brain feels

I ma trying to feel more well adjusted than I really am, which is, I guess, the human condition.

Douglas Coupland

human-condition wells trying

When you see such photos, you can't help but wonder at just how sweet and sad and innocent all moments of life are rendered by the tripping of a camera's shutter, for at that point the future is still unknown and has yet to hurt us, and also for that brief moment, our poses are accepted as honest.

Douglas Coupland

cameras hurt sweet

Jason said, "Yes. Gerard T. Giraffe." What does the 'T' stand for?" 'The.

Douglas Coupland

jason giraffe doe

Time erases both the best and the worst of us.

Douglas Coupland

erase worst

Sometimes I think God is like weather - you may not like the weather, but it has nothing to do with you. You just happen to be there. Deal with it. Sadness and grief are part of being human and always will be.

Douglas Coupland

sadness grief thinking

I think writing would have happened to me anyway, somehow. Differently, but it still would have happened.

Douglas Coupland

stills writing thinking

I build my life so that I don't wake up for anything. Ever. If you make me get up early to do something with you, I will hate you and resent you and figure out a way of never having to work with you ever again.

Douglas Coupland

resent-you up-early hate

In the old days people had far fewer channels in which to place their imaginative time. There's definitely more competition for time . . . and yet people seem to be reading [books] as much.

Douglas Coupland

reading book people

I find people who prejudge reality TV to be annoying. Art comes from anywhere. Culture can ooze out of any crack. Prejudging is the death of creativity.

Douglas Coupland

creativity reality art

I really do force myself to not be fully engaged with all the technology at once, just because I have an addictive personality and I get too into it.

Douglas Coupland

force technology personality

Why are we even here [on earth], what's our human nature? It's precipitating a real philosophical crisis that I find quite fascinating.

Douglas Coupland

philosophical real earth

I like having a beard. My beard changes my face shape and allows me to see in it family members who I love and can't see otherwise.

Douglas Coupland

beard shapes faces

It'd be preposterous for me to propose a universal cure to loneliness but I will say that people who do the things they find interesting, either creatively or vocationally, tend to become unlonely very quickly.

Douglas Coupland

loneliness people interesting

So much information lacks a good way to store it, especially when it's all digital; sometimes it requires old technology to go back and retrieve it.

Douglas Coupland

information technology way

It's just amazing how hard it is for people to change, even when amazing things happen. It almost reinforces who you are instead of making you change.

Douglas Coupland

hard happens people

The more you want something to happen, the harder it becomes.

Douglas Coupland

harder want-something want

I think, there are people for whom freedom is a bigger, more important thing than stability.

Douglas Coupland

important people thinking

I think individual people are interesting, not really groups of people.

Douglas Coupland

people interesting thinking

Give parents the tiniest of confidences and they'll use them as crowbars to jimmy you open and rearrange your life with no perspective.