Douglas Coupland
Canadian fiction writer and cultural commentator.
I don't want dainty little moments of insight ...
We are at the vanguard of adolescent protraction.
I think about how I think I know a person then 'poof!' I discover I only knew a cartoon version. Suddenly there's this fleshy, demanding, noisy creature in front of me, unknowable and just as lost as I am, and equally unable to remember that every soul in the world is hurting, not just themselves.
You pretend to be more eccentric than you actually are because you worry you are an interchangeable cog.
At what point in our lives do we stop blurring? When do we become crisp individuals? What must we do in order to end these fuzzy identities - to clarify just who it is we really are?
Life is dull, but it could be worse and it could be better. We accept that a corporation determines our life’s routines. It’s the trade-off so that we don’t have to be chronically unemployed creative types, and we know it. When we were younger, we’d at least make a show of not being fooled and leave copies of Adbusters on our desktops. After a few years it just doesn’t matter. You trawl for jokes or amusingly diversionary .wav files. You download music. A new project comes along, then endures a slow-motion smothering at the hands of meetings. All ideas feel stillborn. The air smells like five hundred sheets of paper.
And then it’s another day.
We barely have enough time to figure out who we are and then we become bitter and isolated as we age.
Vaccinated Time Travel: To fantasize about traveling backward in time, but only with proper vaccinations.
Preemptive boringness. Being one-dimensional is the most satisfying method of coping with out-of-control people - with any situation that's out of control ... Don't let people know the ideas you love, the games you've played, the places you've visited in your mind. Keep your treasure to yourself.
TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public.
Is feeling nothing the inevitable result of believing in nothing? ...I thought it would be such a sick joke to have to remain alive for decades and not believe in or feel anything.
I hear that God has a really bad haircut.
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.
Ask whatever challenges dead and thoughtless beliefs.
The two of you start talking about your feelings and your feelings float outside of you like vapors, and they mix together like a fog. Before you realize it, the two of you have become the same mist and you realize you can never return to being just a lone cloud again, because the isolation would be intolerable.
You worry that if you lower your guard, even for one second, your whole world will disintegrate into chaos.
"'Is the hotel Marge? It has to be Marge. I want atmosphere.' Marge is Anna-Louise's word describing sad, 1950s-ish diner-type places where the waitresses are named Marge."
"You're never too old to dance, Dad...and you're never too old to dream."
"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say. Were you saying that with irony or for real?"
You are paralyzed by the fact that cruelty is often amusing.
Her friends have become who they've become by default. Their dreams are forgotten, or were never formulated to begin with.