When Donald Duck traded his wings for arms, was he trading up or trading down? Douglas Coupland More Quotes by Douglas Coupland More Quotes From Douglas Coupland I am aware that there is a world out there that functions without regard to me. There are wars and budgets and bombings and vast dimensions of wealth and greed and ambition and corruption. And yet I don't feel a part of that world, and I wouldn't know how to join if I tried. Douglas Coupland greed ambition war Mom said that people are interested in birds only in as much as they exhibit human behavior - greed and stupidity and anger - and by doing so they free us from the unique sorrow of being human...I told Mom my own theory of why we like birds - of how birds are a miracle because they prove to us there is a finer, simpler state of being which we may strive to attain. Douglas Coupland mom unique people I know it's not cat food, but what exactly is it that they put inside of tinned ravioli? Douglas Coupland cat-food exactly-is cat TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public. Douglas Coupland technology stupid time Back in the late 1970's, when I was fifteen years old, I spent every penny I then had in the bank to fly across the continent in a 747 jet to Brandon, Manitoba, deep in the Canadian prairies, to witness a total eclipse of the sun. Douglas Coupland eclipse-of-the-sun fifteen years A good piece of technology dreams of the day when it will be replaced by a newer piece of technology. This is one definition of progress. Douglas Coupland progress technology dream Knee-Jerk Irony: The tendency to make flippant ironic comments as a reflexive matter of course in everyday conversation. Douglas Coupland flippant ironic everyday just then a bee bumbled above us and stole our attention the way flying things can Douglas Coupland flying attention way A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age ... pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives. They don't want to be who they are any more. They want out. This list includes Thurston Howell the Third, Ann-Margret, the cat members of Rent, Václav Havel, space shuttle astronauts and Snuffleupagus. It's universal. Douglas Coupland cat dream past OPTION PARALYSIS: The tendency, when given unlimited choices, to make none. Douglas Coupland tendencies unlimited choices 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 mean years thinking You really have to wonder why we even bother to get up in the morning. I mean, really: Why work? Simply to buy more stuff? That's just not enough. Look at us all. What's the common assumption that got us all from there to here? What makes us deserve the ice cream and running shoes and wool Italian suits we have? I mean, I see all of us trying so hard to acquire so much stuff, but I can't help but feeling that we didn't merit it. Douglas Coupland running morning mean 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 hug mother people Figure our what it is you don't do very well, and then don't do it. I'm not beating myself up about doing everything perfectly. The litmus test I always use for myself is: "Okay, if you won 20 million tomorrow in the lottery would you still being doing the same thing you are doing now with your life, Dough? The answer is "yes". I'm always very conscious of that. Douglas Coupland tests use answers When you grow up these days, you're told you're going to have four or five different careers during your lifetime. But what they don't tell you is that you're also going to be four or five different people along the way. Douglas Coupland growing-up careers people I guess the thing about exposing your heart is that people may not even notice it. Like a flop movie. Or they'll borrow your heart and they'll forget to return it to you. Douglas Coupland heart may people And in your new lives you'll have to live entirely for that one sensation-that of imminent truth. And you're going to have to holler for it, steal for it, beg for it-and you're never to stop asking questions about it twenty-four hours a day, the rest of your life. Douglas Coupland asking-questions twenties new-life maybe memories are like karaoke-where you realize up on the stage, with all those lyrics scrawling across the screen's bottom, and with everybody clapping at you, that you didn't know even half the lyrics to your all-time favourite song. Only afterwards, when someone else is up on stage humiliating themselves amid the clapping and laughing, do you realize that what you liiked most about your favourite song was precisely your ignorance of its full meaning- and you read more into it than maybe existed in the first place. I think it's better to not know the lyrics to your life. Douglas Coupland ignorance song memories One of my own stray childhood fears had been to wonder what a whale might feel like had it been born and bred in captivity, then released into the wild-into its ancestral sea-its limited world instantly blowing up when cast into the unknowable depths, seeing strange fish and tasting new waters, not even having a concept of depth, not knowing the language of any whale pods it might meet. It was my fear of a world that would expand suddenly, violently, and without rules or laws: bubbles and seaweed and storms and frightening volumes of dark blue that never end. Douglas Coupland knowing dark blue You're right, a spleen is a strange thing-we technically don't need one, but maybe spleens are kept in our bodies in case we mutate or evolve, and if we grow wings or tentacles we need to have the spleen in place in order for them to work. Douglas Coupland wings order needs
