QuotesTemple

Everybody past a certain age, regardless of how they look on the outside, pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.

Doug Coupland

The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself.

Doug Coupland

The capacity for not feeling lonely can carry a very real price, that of feeling nothing at all.

Doug Coupland

Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure.

Doug Coupland

Handmade presents are scary because they reveal that you have too much free time.

Doug Coupland

Most people have no idea how to politely answer a phone. The English do, and it's been their only major business advantage for the past two centuries.

Doug Coupland

The real killers in the business world aren't the ones who aim for the top, it's the ones who aim for two notches below the top.

Doug Coupland

Canadians can easily 'pass for American' as long as we don't accidentally use metric measurements or apologize when hit by a car.

Doug Coupland

If God drives a car, He'd drive a 1973 Ford LTD Brougham sedan with a claret-colored vinyl roof, with oxblood leather upholstery and an opera window.

Doug Coupland

If you don't change, then what's the point of anything happening to you?

Doug Coupland

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.

Doug Coupland

If human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween.

Doug Coupland

Workshops and seminars are basically financial speed dating for clueless people.

Doug Coupland

We want our idols to be dead because it makes death a much less scary place.

Doug Coupland

Flying dreams mean that you're doing the right thing with your life.

Doug Coupland

Everybody past a certain age, regardless of how they look on the outside, pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.

Doug Coupland

High school is such a shared experience in North American culture.

Doug Coupland

Big companies are like marching bands. Even if half the band is playing random notes, it still sounds kind of like music. The concealment of failure is built into them.

Doug Coupland

Sometimes failure isn't an opportunity in disguise, it's just you.

Doug Coupland

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

Doug Coupland

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

Doug Coupland

Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure.

Doug Coupland

People are pretty forgiving when it comes to other people's families. The only family that ever horrifies you is your own.

Doug Coupland

It's very strange that most people don't care if their knowledge of their family history only goes back three generations.

Doug Coupland

Everybody has basically the same family, it's just reconfigured slightly differently from one to the next.

Doug Coupland

Forget about being world famous, it's hard enough just getting the automatic doors at the supermarket to acknowledge our existence.

Doug Coupland

You pretend to be more eccentric than you actually are because you fear you are an interchangeable cog.

Doug Coupland

I know it's not cat food, but what exactly is it that they put inside of tinned ravioli?

Doug Coupland

There's nothing cure or funny or lovable about being cheap. It's a total turn-off.

Doug Coupland

In the future, torture will once again become the recreational sport of the rich.

Doug Coupland

I think that in the future, clocks won't say three o'clock anymore. They'll just get right to the point and rename three o'clock 'Pepsi.'

Doug Coupland

When future archaeologists dig up the remains of California, they're going to find all of those gyms their scary-looking gym equipment, and they're going to assume that we were a culture obsessed with torture.

Doug Coupland

It also allows you to look as though you're not particularly from the present, future or past, either.

Doug Coupland

The future and eternity are two entirely different things.

Doug Coupland

A bland smile is like a green light at an intersection, it feels good when you get one, but you forget it the moment you're past it.

Doug Coupland

If you don't have a spiritual practice in place when times are good, you can't expect to suddenly develop one during a moment of crisis.

Doug Coupland

Unhappiness is something we are never taught about we are taught to expect happiness, but never a Plan B to use to use when the happiness doesn't arrive.

Doug Coupland

It's very strange that most people don't care if their knowledge of their family history only goes back three generations.

Doug Coupland

We live in an era with no historical precedents. History is no longer useful as a tool in helping us understand current changes.

Doug Coupland

If someone decides to be a musician now, it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it, it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now, there is no hope for money at the end of it.

Doug Coupland

It's very strange that most people don't care if their knowledge of their family history only goes back three generations.

Doug Coupland

Depression is when you have lots of love, but no one's taking.

Doug Coupland

Men won't read any email from a woman that's over 200 words long.

Doug Coupland

People will always choose more money over more sex.

Doug Coupland

If someone decides to be a musician now, it means because there is no hope of money at the end of it, it means they really want to be a musician. And if someone is writing now, there is no hope for money at the end of it.

Doug Coupland

I think money is due for some sort of collapse. People are going to realize that money has a half-life, like radioactive elements.

Doug Coupland

Big companies are like marching bands. Even if half the band is playing random notes, it still sounds kind of like music. The concealment of failure is built into them.

Doug Coupland

Nature is one great big wood-chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones and hair.

Doug Coupland

If cats were double the size they are now, they'd probably be illegal.

Doug Coupland

Forget sex or politics or religion, loneliness is the subject that clears out a room.

Doug Coupland

Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure.

Doug Coupland

Before machines the only form of entertainment people really had was relationships.

Doug Coupland

The person who needs the other person the least in a relationship is the stronger member.

Doug Coupland

Forget sex or politics or religion, loneliness is the subject that clears out a room.

Doug Coupland

Christmas makes everything twice as sad.

Doug Coupland

A bland smile is like a green light at an intersection, it feels good when you get one, but you forget it the moment you're past it.

Doug Coupland

Technology favors horrible people.

Doug Coupland

The time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself.

Doug Coupland

There's much to be said for feeling numb. Time passes more quickly. You eat less, and because numbness encourages laziness, you do fewer things, good or bad, and the world's probably a better place for it.

Doug Coupland

Christmas makes everything twice as sad.

Doug Coupland