Douglas Coupland Quotes

Grandpa, like most of the fun-loving gang who built the Plants, just wanted to die or have his brain turn to oatmeal before it becomes too apparent exactly what a nightmare he and his buddies have saddled their descendants with.

Ethan, there has to be more to my life than this.
"Why can't you just be happy as a shallow cartoon glyph of a human like everybody else here?"

I have this theory about smart people. If you're smart, you're either the only person in your family who's smart, or everybody in the family is smart. No in-between.
I considered this. "I think I come from the everybody's smart category. But they don't apply their smarts to… larger picture pursuits. That includes me."

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.

Boomer Envy: Envy of material wealth and long-range material security accrued by older members of the baby boom generation by virtue of fortunate births.

A thousand years ago this wouldn’t have been the case. If human beings had suddenly vanished a thousand years ago, the planet would have healed overnight with no damage. Maybe a few lumps where the pyramids stand. One hundred years ago—or even fifty years ago—the world would have healed itself just fine in the absence of people. But not now. We crossed the line. The only thing that can keep the planet turning smoothly now is human free will forged into effort. Nothing else. That’s why the world has seemed so large in the past few years, and time so screwy. It’s because Earth is now totally ours.

Technology does not always equal progress.

Historical Slumming: The act of visiting locations such as diners, smokestack industrial sites, rural village—locations where time appears to have been frozen many years back—so as to experience relief when one returns back to “the present.”

Bleeding Ponytail: An elderly sold out baby boomer who pines for hippie or pre-sellout days.

Life need not be a story, but it does need to be an adventure.

You worry that if you lower your guard, even for one second, your whole world will disintegrate into chaos.

It turns out that only twenty percent of human beings have a sense of irony — which means that eighty percent of the world takes everything at face value. I can’t imagine anything worse than that. Okay, maybe I can, but imagine reading the morning newspaper and believing it all to be true on some level.

Comics day came and went. Another shoes day came and went. And another comics day followed that — the typical production and consumption cycles that help us survice our dismal, meaningless little lives.