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. – Douglas Coupland
I know it’s not cat food, but what exactly is it that they put inside of tinned ravioli? – Douglas Coupland
You can’t get mad at weather because weather’s not about you. Apply that lesson to most other aspects of life. – Douglas Coupland
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. – Douglas Coupland
We are a dreadful species indeed, and deserve whatever it is our techno-baubles do to us. – Douglas Coupland
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. – Douglas Coupland
The thing about the end of the world is that not just the West collapses, the whole world does. – Douglas Coupland
I miss the silliness of the Nineties. What would society be like if 9/11 never happened? If that silliness was extended forever? – Douglas Coupland
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. – Douglas Coupland
I get verklempt if I see a vintage TI-30 or TI-54 calculator. But I don’t think I’d want to use one. – Douglas Coupland
Is there anything in the world more annoyingly creepy than an unspoken dress code? – Douglas Coupland
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. – Douglas Coupland
Your ability to rationalize your own bad deeds makes you believe that the whole world is as amoral as you are. – Douglas Coupland
The modern economy isn’t about the redistribution of wealth, it’s about the redistribution of time. – Douglas Coupland
You pretend to be more eccentric than you actually are because you fear you are an interchangeable cog. – Douglas Coupland
On TV people look at your hair and then they look at your skin, and then they look at your clothes, and by the time they’re listening to what you’re saying, you’re off the screen. – Douglas Coupland
Forget about being world famous, it’s hard enough just getting the automatic doors at the supermarket to acknowledge our existence. – Douglas Coupland
I’ve never really seen too much difference between writing or making visual art or designing furniture or clothing. It’s still my brain – I’m just using different parts of it for different things. – 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. – Douglas Coupland
It’s a cliche, but true, that writing is intensely solitary and at times really lonely. I sit in one room and talk to squirrels and blue jays all day. – Douglas Coupland
Too much free time is certainly a monkey’s paw in disguise. Most people can’t handle a structureless life. – Douglas Coupland
