Sometimes it feels as if everything in life is just something we haul into the grave. Douglas Coupland More Quotes by Douglas Coupland More Quotes From Douglas Coupland Here are some passing thoughts. Imagine looking up at the moon and seeing it burning. Imagine seeing the grocery store’s checkout girl grow horns. Imagine growing younger instead of older. Imagine feeling more powerful and more capable of falling in love with life every new day instead of being scared and sick and not knowing whether to stay under a sheet or venture forth into the cold. Douglas Coupland falling-in-lovegirlpowerful Once he entered my life, I promptly forgot all my years of putting on a brave face while browsing at bookstores until closing time, and of having one, two, three beers while watching crime shows and CNN. I completely forgot the hateful sensation of loneliness, like thirst and hunger together pressing on my stomach. Douglas Coupland cnnlonelinessbeer If you look at life as a whole, we have to admit life's good where we live. But in an evil Twilight Zone kind of way there's nothing else to choose. In the old days there was always a Bohemia or a creative under-world to join if the mainstream life wasn't your bag - or a life of crime, or even religion.And now there's only the system. All other options have evaporated. For most people it's the System or what... death? There's nothing. There's no way out now. Douglas Coupland twilightfearpeople You wait for fate to bring about the changes in life which you should be bringing about by yourself. Douglas Coupland life-changingfatewaiting Brain research tells us 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. Douglas Coupland twentiesbrainmean Star Trek characters never go shopping. Douglas Coupland futurestarscharacter So where do you start when you want to start your life again? Douglas Coupland want Trevor realized that the odd thing about English is that no matter how much you screw sequences word up up, you understood, still, like Yoda, will be. Other languages don't work that way. French? Dieu! Misplace a single le or la and an idea vaporizes into a sonic puff. English is flexible: you can jam it into a Cuisinart for an hour, remove it, and meaning will still emerge. Douglas Coupland odd-thingsjamideas If I've learned anything in twenty-nine years, it's that every human being you see in the course of a day has a problem that's sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar. My gift - bad choice of words - is that I can look at you, him, her, them, whoever, and tell right away what is keeping them awake at night: money; feelings of insignificance; overwhelming boredom; evil children; job troubles; or perhaps death, in one of its many costumes, perched in the wings. What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives. Douglas Coupland jobsnightchildren Gore is nature's way of saying, "There are too many human beings on the planet, and I'm trying to rectify this any way I can. SARS didn't work, but trust me, I'm cooking up something better. In the interim, please kill lots of yourselves. Douglas Coupland cookingtryingway Nothing very very good and nothing very very bad lasts for very very long. Douglas Coupland laststimelong Human beings are the only animal that thinks they change who they are simply by moving to a different place. Birds migrate, but it's not quite the same thing. Douglas Coupland animalmovingthinking As I'm never going to be old, I'm glad that I never lost my sense of wonder about the world, although I have a hunch it would have happened pretty soon. I loved the world, its beauty and bigness as well as its smallness. Douglas Coupland wonderlostworld If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure. Douglas Coupland failuredoelooks Las Vegas is a SimCity game gone horribly wrong. Douglas Coupland las-vegasvegasgames My writing process is ritualized and monotonous, but there's no other way to get the job done. All other fiction writers I've met say the same thing. Douglas Coupland writingjobsfiction With the first drink comes the truth, with the second drink comes wishful thinking, and with the third drink come the lies. Douglas Coupland lyingfirststhinking I say ‘Uhmm...’ a lot. I mentioned this to Karla and she says it’s a CPU word. It means you’re assembling data in your head - spooling. Douglas Coupland assemblingdatamean What's clarity like? Try to remember that funny feeling inside your head when you had math problems too difficult to solve: the faint buzzing noise in your ears, a heaviness on both sides of your skull, and the sensation that your brain is twitching inside your cranium like a fish on the beach. This is the opposite sensation of clarity. Yet for many people of my era, as they aged, this sensation became the dominant sensation of their lives. It was as though day-to-day twentieth century living had become an unsolvable algebraic equation. Douglas Coupland skullsmathbeach Give parents the tiniest of confidences and they'll use them as crowbars to jimmy you open and rearrange your life with no perspective. Douglas Coupland perspectiveparentgiving
