Quotes from Douglas Coupland

Later, I would learn that coincidences are the most planned things in the world. Later, I would learn that every single moment is a coincidence.

I think we're simply going to run out of Nature before we have a chance to destroy it.

Chronocanine Envy: Sadness experienced when one realized that, unlike one's dog, one cannot live only in the present tense. As Kierkegaard said, Life must be lived forward.

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

And I think back over my own life and I realize that my own nature-the core me-essentially hasn't changed all these years. When I wake up in the morning, for those first few moments before I remember where I am or when I am, I still feel that same way I did when I woke up at the age of five.

Sometimes I think God is like weather - you may not like the weather, but it has nothing to do with you. You just happen to be there. Deal with it. Sadness and grief are part of being human and always will be.

It was pivotal in making you but you don't remember it. Or do you? Do we understand the events that make us who we are? Do we understand the factors that make us do the things we do?

Is that all time is - our perception of how quickly it does or does not pass?

People listening to songs are like people reading novels: for a few minutes, for a few hours, someone else gets to come in and hijack that part of your brain that's always thinking. A good book or song kidnaps your interior voice and does all the driving. With the artist in charge you're free for a little while to leave your body and be someone else.

Give parents the tiniest of confidences and they'll use them as crowbars to jimmy you open and rearrange your life with no perspective. Sometimes I'd just like to mace them. I want to tell them that I envy their upbringings that were so clean, so free of futurelessness. And I want to throttle them for blindly handing over the world to us like so much skid-marked underwear.

Beware of the corporate invasion of private memory.

I thought it would be such a sick joke to have to remain to be alive for decades and not believe in or feel anything.

a feeling at once destructive, romantic, and grand-like falling into a swimming pool dressed in a tuxedo.

Anyway, I want to remember that love can happen. Because there is life after not having a life. I never expected love to happen. What was I expecting from life, then?

what I remember is the silence in spite of the noise. In my head it might just as well have been a snowy day in the country.

You know, I really think that when God puts together families, he sticks his finger into the white pages and selects a group of people at random and then says to them all, 'Hey! You're going to spend the next seventy years together, even though you have nothing in common and don't even like each other. And, should you not feel yourself caring about any of this group of strangers, even for a second, you will just feel dreadful

All systems have failed me. In five minutes I'll be fine again for a while, but right now the inside of my head feels like Niagara Falls without the noise, just this mist and churning and no real sense of where earth ends and heaven begins.

I think of how people can betray me simply by not caring enough to hide the fact of how little they care.I think of how the person who needs the other person the least in a relationship is the stronger member.

Sometimes you accidentally input an extra digit into the year: i.e, 19993 and you add 18,000 years on to *now*, and you realize that the year 19993 will one day exist and that time is a scary thing, indeed.

What is prayer but a wish for the events in your life to string together to form a story -- something that makes some sense of events you know have meaning.

There are three things we cry for in life - things that are lost, things that are found, and things that are magnificent.

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 a 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.

Trevor realized that the odd thing about English is that no matter how much you screw sequences word up up, you understood, still, like Yoda, will be. Other languages don't work that way. French? Dieu! Misplace a single le or la and an idea vaporizes into a sonic puff. English is flexible: you can jam it into a Cuisinart for an hour, remove it, and meaning will still emerge.

Do you remember that old TV series, Get Smart? Do you remember at the beginning where Maxwell Smart is walking down the secret corridor and there are all of those doors that open sideways, and upside down and gateways and stuff? I think that everyone keeps a whole bunch of doors just like this between themselves and the world. But when you're in love, all of your doors are open, and all of their doors are open. And you roller-skate down your halls together.