Quotes from Douglas 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.

Money is more than a massively consensual IOU note. It is a piece of infrastructure and is as artificial as Interstate 5, NutraSweet or season three of 'Mad Men.'

Gap clothing allows you to look like you're from nowhere and anywhere.

I think that to acknowledge a new generation is to acknowledge some degree of obsolescence in yourself, and that is very hard to do and often comes with undeniable anger.

My life is neither a disaster nor supernatural, yet it is an unlikely event.

The reason the future feels odd is because of its unpredictability. If the future didn't feel weirdly unexpected, then something would be wrong.

Is there anything in the world more annoyingly creepy than an unspoken dress code?

I've always felt like an alien trapped in a human form. We all do at some time or other; for me it's a permanent state, and I'm still unsure if Earth is a penance or a reward.

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.

I will say that my days are spent solitary and somewhat lost in thought, and every single time I inadvertently wear my shirt inside out in public, I bump into my sister-in-law at the grocery store.

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.

A man in a bookstore buys a book on loneliness and every woman in the store hits on him. A woman buys a book on loneliness and the store clears out.

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

It's just amazing how hard it is for people to change, even when amazing things happen. It almost reinforces who you are instead of making you change.

The urge to reincarnate while still alive is near universal.

We decided that the French could never write user-friendly software because they're so rude.

Destiny is what we work toward. The future doesn't exist yet. Fate is for losers!

You really have to wonder why we even bother to get up in the morning. I mean, really: Why work? Simply to buy more stuff?

Birds are a miracle because they prove to us there is a finer, simpler state of being which we may strive to attain.

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

Much of what we now consider 'personality' will be explained away as structural and chemical functions of the brain.

Cloning is great. If God made the original, then making copies should be fine.

Most of us have only two or three genuinely interesting moments in our lives; the rest is filler.

I find people who prejudge reality TV to be annoying. Art comes from anywhere. Culture can ooze out of any crack. Prejudging is the death of creativity.