Quotes by 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."

"The future and eternity are two entirely different things."

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

"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."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure."

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

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

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

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

"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."

"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."

"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."

"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.'"

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

"People will always choose more money over more sex."

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

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

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

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

"Technology favors horrible people."

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

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

"Christmas makes everything twice as sad."

"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."

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

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

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

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

"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."

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

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

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