Douglas Coupland
Fondue sets, martini shakers and juicing machines: three things the world could live completely without.
Americans are a quarter of a billion people who have almost nothing in common except for the fact they've been told they have lots in common.
Being asked what animal you'd like to be is a trick question; you're already an animal.
It's difficult to speak with beautiful people. No matter how hard you try to pretend otherwise, you still want them to like you.
Clowns drink to blot out the ravages of terrifying children for a living.
Figure out what it is in life you don't do well, and then don't do it.
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.'
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.
Canadians can easily 'pass for American' as long as we don't accidentally use metric measurements or apologize when hit by a car.
Eagles are seagulls with a good hairdo.
Every human being you see in the course of a day has a problem that's sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar.
Make your goals big and broad enough so that they never become answered prayers and boomerang to curse you.
Only losers make decisions when things are bad. The time to rejig your life is the time when it's seemingly smooth.
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.
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.
You can't fake creativity, competence, or sexual arousal.
Fate is for losers.
I want pills called September 10. You take one and your mind feels like the 11th never happened.
Earth was not built for six billion people all running around and being passionate about things. The world was built for about two million people foraging for roots and grubs.
The modern economy isn't about the redistribution of wealth, it's about the redistribution of time.
If I think too much about all of those Chinese factories where all the stuff in a Wal-Mart is made, I get that woozy feeling you get when you see ducks covered in crude oil.
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.
We want our idols to be dead because it makes death a much less scary place.
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.
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.
We need to be around our families not because we have so many shared experiences to talk about, but instead because they know precisely which subjects to avoid.
Everybody has basically the same family, it's just reconfigured slightly differently from one to the next.
Once you establish a look, and once everybody recognizes that look as your look, you never have to think about fashion again.
Salad bars are like a restaurant's lungs. They soak up the impurities and bacteria in the environment, leaving you with much cleaner air to enjoy.
Is there anything in the world more annoyingly creepy than an unspoken dress code?
What if God exists except it turns out he doesn't really like people very much?
Nature is one great big wood-chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones and hair.
The universe hands you opportunities for a while, and if you don't take them, the universe says to itself, 'Oh I see, this person doesn't like opportunities' and stops giving them to you.
With Google I'm starting to burn out on knowing the answer to everything. People in the year 2020 are going to be nostalgic for the sensation of feeling clueless.
Florida isn't so much a place where one goes to reinvent oneself, as it is a place where one goes if one no longer wished to be found.
God is what keeps us together after the love is gone.
Blame is just a lazy person's way of making sense of chaos.
Every single moment is a coincidence.
Royalty is either going to do very well with cloning, or it's going to disappear completely.
Your body isn't just a body. It's an ecosystem.
If you're not a tree hugger, then you're a what, a tree hater?
Adventure without risk is Disneyland.
I'm not a hoarder, I'm a collector: if you have something you like, every time you see it, you have a little happy hit.
Who wants to talk on the phone? If you want to talk to me, text me. Or if we must, let's meet in person.
Birds are a miracle because they prove to us there is a finer, simpler state of being which we may strive to attain.
I have trouble with seafood because it tastes like a dock.
When you crop the photo, you tell a lie.
There are three things we cry about in life, things that are lost, things that are found, and things that are magnificent.
Nothing very very good and nothing very very bad ever lasts for very very long.