The collection / 127 fragments

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Passages, proverbs, and questions carried across the ages.

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01c. 1961 AD

People who advocate simplicity have money in the bank; the money came first, not the simplicity.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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02c. 1961 AD

I think it takes an amazing amount of energy to convince oneself that the Forever Person isn't just around the corner. In the end I believe we never do convince ourselves. I know that I found it increasingly hard to maintain the pose of emotional self-sufficiency lying on my bed and sitting at my desk, watching the gulls cartwheeling in the clouds over the bridges, cradling myself in my own arms, breathing warm chocolate-and-vodka breath on a rose I had found on a street corner, trying to force it to bloom.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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03c. 1961 AD

Failure is authentic, and because it's authentic, it's real and genuine, and because of that, it's a pure state of being.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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04c. 1961 AD

And in his heart, I think, he's now learned what I came to believe, which is, as I've said all along, that the sun may burn brightly, and the faces of children may be plump and achingly sweet, but in the air we breathe, in the water we drink and in the food we share, there will always be darkness in this world.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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05c. 1961 AD

As you grow older, it becomes harder to feel 100 percent happy; you learn all the things that can go wrong, you become superstitious about tempting fate, about bringing disaster upon your life by accidentally feeling too good one day.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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06c. 1961 AD

Their talk was endless, compulsive, and indulgent, sometimes sounding like the remains of the English language after having been hashed over by nuclear war survivors for a few hundred years.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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07c. 1961 AD

Do you remember how you felt at seventeen? I do and I don't (...) Imagine you came from outer space and someone showed you a butterfly and a caterpillar. Would you ever put the two of them together? That's me and my memories.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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08c. 1961 AD

Anyway, it's a good thing we're human. We design business spreadsheets, paint programs, and word processing equipment. So that tells you where we're at as a species. What is the search for the next great compelling application but a search for the human identity?

Douglas Coupland / quote

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09c. 1961 AD

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?-Richard

Douglas Coupland / quote

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10c. 1961 AD

I think that emotions affect you as much as x-rays and vitamins and car crashes.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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11c. 1961 AD

I wouldn't mind if the consumer culture went poof! overnight because then we'd all be in the same boat and life wouldn't be so bad, mucking about with the chickens and feudalism and the like. But you know what would be absolutely horrible. The worst? ... If, as we were all down on earth wearing rags and husbanding pigs inside abandoned Baskin-Robbins franchises, I were to look up in the sky and see a jet -- with just one person inside even -- I'd go berserk. I'd go crazy. Either everyone slides back into the Dark Ages or no one does.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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12c. 1961 AD

Wow. Whoops. Sorry. ... I just lost two hours inside a YouTube kitten warp.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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13c. 1961 AD

To acknowledge God is to fully accept the sorrow of the human condition.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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14c. 1961 AD

People listening to songs are like people reading novels: for a few minutes, for a few hours, someone else gets to come in and hijack that part of your brain that's always thinking. A good book or song kidnaps your interior voice and does all the driving. With the artist in charge you're free for a little while to leave your body and be someone else.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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15c. 1961 AD

And once again, work is providing us with a comforting sense of normalcy-living and working inside of coding's predictably segmented time/space. Simply grinding away at something makes life feel stable, even though the external particulars of life (like our pay checks, our office, and so forth) are, at best, random.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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16c. 1961 AD

Hi! I'm Ethan, I shop at Ikea. I bought a $300 dining suite and it took me three days to assemble!

Douglas Coupland / quote

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17c. 1961 AD

Personality is a slot machine, and the cherries, lemons, and bells are your SSRI system, your schizophrenic tendency, your left/right brain lobalization, your anxiety proclivity, your wiring glitches, your place on the autistic and OCD spectrums - and to these we must add the deep-level influences of the machines and systems of intelligence that guided your brain into maturity.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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18c. 1961 AD

«…you’re too old not to have had, how shall I say, certain experiences. You’ve had bad internet dates. You’ve had people be creeps to you. You’ve seen what you’ve seen; you’ve felt what you’ve felt. Ideology is for people who don’t trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world»«I feel like I am going mad»«Madness is actually quite rare in individuals. It’s groups of people who go mad. Countries, cults ... religions»

Douglas Coupland / quote

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19c. 1961 AD

When you're young, you always feel that life hasn't yet begun—that "life" is always scheduled to begin next week, next month, next year, after the holidays—whenever. But then suddenly you're old and the scheduled life didn't arrive. You find yourself asking, 'Well then, exactly what was it I was having—that interlude—the scrambly madness—all that time I had before?

Douglas Coupland / quote

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20c. 1961 AD

The only way to the top is killing and greed. Okay, I’m kidding. But killing helps.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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21c. 1961 AD

The richness of the rain made me feel safe and protected; I have always considered the rain to be healing—a blanket—the comfort of a friend. Without at least some rain in any given day, or at least a cloud or two on the horizon, I feel overwhelmed by the information of sunlight and yearn for the vital, muffling gift of falling water.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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22c. 1961 AD

The sixties are like a theme park to them. They wear the costume, buy their tickets, and they have the experience.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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23c. 1961 AD

Nostalgia for the 20th century brain helps nobody.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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24c. 1961 AD

In Canada, when we speak of water, we're speaking of ourselves. Canadians are known to be unextravagant, and one explanation of this might be that we know that wasted water means a diminished collective soul; polluted waters mean a sickened soul. Water is the basis of our self-identity, and when we dream of canoes and thunderstorms and streams and even snowballs, we're dreaming about our innermost selves.

Douglas Coupland / quote

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