"Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony."
— Douglas Coupland (Shampoo Planet)

"TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public."
— Douglas Coupland (JPod)

""And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened." "
— Douglas Coupland

"We are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die."
— Douglas Coupland

"Here's my theory about meetings and life: the three things you can't fake are erections, competence and creativity."
— Douglas Coupland (JPod: A Novel)

"Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we've missed the chance to have had other people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounds like a quiet tragedy."
— Douglas Coupland (Life After God)

"All families are psychotic. Everybody has basically the same family - it's just reconfigured slightly different from one to the next."
— Douglas Coupland

"In the end, I think the relationships that survive in this world are the ones where two people can finish each other's sentences. Forget drama and torrid sex and the clash of opposites. Give me banter any day of the week. "
— Douglas Coupland

"Adventure without risk is Disneyland"
— Douglas Coupland

"In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We speak in sentences that end before finishing. We sleep heavily because we need to ask so many questions as we dream alone. We bump into others and feel bashful at recognizing souls so similar to ourselves."
— Douglas Coupland (Shampoo Planet)

"My secret is that I need God--that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love."
— Douglas Coupland (Life After God)

"I realized that once people are broken in certain ways they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one."
— Douglas Coupland (Life After God)

"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 (The Gum Thief: A Novel)

"I don't deserve a soul, yet I still have one. I know because it hurts."
— Douglas Coupland (The Gum Thief: A Novel)

""I am going to give you a piece of advice...advice I wish I'd been told in guidance class back in high school, in between the don't-do-acid and don't-drink-and-drive films. I wish our counselors had told us, 'When you grow older a dreadful, horrible sensation will come over you. It's called loneliness, and you think you know what it is now, but you don't. Here is the list of the symptoms, and don't worry—loneliness is the most universal sensation on the planet. Just remember one fact—loneliness will pass. You will survive and you will be a better human for it.'""
— Douglas Coupland (Shampoo Planet)

"...blame is just a lazy person's way of making sense of chaos. "
— Douglas Coupland (All Families Are Psychotic)

"Please stop putting quotes from Nietzsche at the end of your emails. Five years ago you were laughing your guts out over American Pie 2. What — suddenly you’ve magically turned into Noam Chomsky?"
— Douglas Coupland (JPod)

"Starved for affection, terrified of abandonment, I began to wonder if sex was really just an excuse to look deeply into another human being's eyes."
— Douglas Coupland (Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture)

"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 (Hey Nostradamus!)

"As I'm never going to be old, I'm glad that I never lost my sense of wonder about the world, although I have a hunch it would have happened pretty soon. I loved the world, its beauty and bigness as well as its smallness."
— Douglas Coupland (Hey Nostradamus!)

"When someone tells you they’ve just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no longer have a personality. You can immediately assume so many things: that they’re locked into jobs they hate; that they’re broke; that they spend every night watching videos; that they’re fifteen pounds overweight; that they no longer listen to new ideas. It’s profoundly depressing. "
— Douglas Coupland (Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture)

"I think that every reader on earth has a list of cherished books as unique as their fingerprints....I think that, as you age, you tend to gravitate towards the classics, but those aren't the books that give you the same sort of hope for the world that a cherished book does."
— Douglas Coupland

""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 (Life After God)

"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 (The Gum Thief: A Novel)

"Only the disenfranchised can party with abandon."
— Douglas Coupland

"I think of how the person who needs the other person the least in a relationship is the stronger member."
— Douglas Coupland (Shampoo Planet)

"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

"Lists only spell out the things that can be taken away from us by moths and rust and thieves. If something is valuable, don't put it in a list. Don't even say the words."
— Douglas Coupland (Hey Nostradamus!)

"I sandpapered the roof of my mouth with 3 bowls of Cap'n Crunch - had raw gobbets of mouth-beef dangling onto my tongue all day"
— Douglas Coupland (Microserfs)

"...we're told by TV and Reader's Digest that a crisis will trigger massive personal change--and that those big changes will make the pain worthwhile. But from what he could see, big change almost never happens. People simply feel lost. They have no idea what to say or do or feel or think. they become messes and tend to remain messes."
— Douglas Coupland (The Gum Thief: A Novel)

"I think if human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn't life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don't they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you'd meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to - like talking to dogs. "
— Douglas Coupland (The Gum Thief: A Novel)

"A few years ago it dawned on me that 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."
— Douglas Coupland (The Gum Thief: A Novel)

"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 (Life After God)

"I thought about how odd it is for billions of people to be alive, yet not one of them is really quite sure of what makes people people. The only activities I could think of that humans do that have no animal equivalent were smoking, body-building and writing. That's not much, considering how special we seem to think we are."
— Douglas Coupland

"Eroticize intelligence."
— Douglas Coupland (Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture)

"Question: If there were two of you which one would win?"
— Douglas Coupland

"She went crazy with a calm face,
justifiably so."
— Douglas Coupland

"What else? I also believe that if someone comes up behind you on the freeway and flashes their lights to get you to move into the slow lane, they deserve whatever punishment you dole out to them. I promptly slow down and drive at the same speed as the car beside me so that I can punish Speed Racer for his impertinence.

Actually, it’s not the impertinence I’m punishing him for, it’s that he let other people know what he wanted.

Speed Racer, my friend, never ever let people know what you want. Because if you do, you might as well send them engraved invitations saying, “Hi, this is what I want you to prevent me from ever having."
— Douglas Coupland (The Gum Thief: A Novel)

"Destiny is what we work toward. The future doesn't exist yet. Fate is for losers!""
— Douglas Coupland (Girlfriend in a Coma)

"Dreams don't come true. Dreams die. Dreams get compromised. Dreams end up dealing meth in a booth at the back of the Olive Garden. Dreams choke to death on bay leaves. Dreams get spleen cancer."
— Douglas Coupland (The Gum Thief: A Novel)

"There is no shame in impulse."
— Douglas Coupland (Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture)

"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

"Now - here is my secret:
I tell it to you with an openness of heart that I doubt I shall ever achieve again,
so I pray that you are in a quiet room as you hear these words. My secret is that I need God -
that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem capable of giving;
to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love."
— Douglas Coupland

"At least when you're young you're also stupid."
— Douglas Coupland (Hey Nostradamus!)

"believe that you've had most of your important memories by the time you're thirty. After that, memory becomes water overflowing into an already full cup. New experiences just don't register in the same way or with the same impact. I could be shooting heroin with the Princess of Wales, naked in a crashing jet, and the experience still couldn't compare to the time the cops chased us after we threw the Taylors' patio furniture into their pool in eleventh grade."
— Douglas Coupland

"Our conversations are never easy, but as I-we-get older, we are finding that our conversations must bespoken. A need burns inside us to share with others what we are feeling Beyond a certain age, sincerity ceases to feel pornographic. It is as though the coolness that marked out youth is itself a type of retrovirus that can only leave you feeling empty. Full of holes."
— Douglas Coupland (Life After God)

"The modern world is devoted to vanishing species, vanishing weather and vanishing capacity for wonder."
— Douglas Coupland (The Gum Thief: A Novel)

"I didn't realize then that so much of being adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our own feelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience"
— Douglas Coupland (Girlfriend in a Coma)

"we are changed souls; we don't look at things the same way anymore. For there was a time when we expected the worst. But then the worst happened, did it not? And so we will never be surprised again.
"
— Douglas Coupland (Life After God)

"Compromise is said to be the way of the world and yet I find myself feeling sick trying to accept what it has done to me."
— Douglas Coupland (Life After God)