End of January 2009 Favorite Quotes – Douglas Coupland, Etc.

“You fear that if you lower your guard for even one second your whole world will disintegrate in
chaos.” –Douglas Coupland

“You wait for fate to bring about the changes in life which you should be bringing about by
yourself.” –Douglas Coupland

“You pretend to be more eccentric than you actually are because you fear you are an
interchangeable cog.” –Douglas Coupland

“Could the situation be that we no longer believe in that particular place? Or maybe we were
all promised Heaven in our lifetimes, and what we ended up with can’t help but suffer in
comparison.” –Douglas Coupland

Here’s my theory about meetings and life; the three things you can’t fake are erections,
competence and creativity. That’s why meetings become toxic they put uncreative people in a
situation in which they have to be something they can never be. And the more effort they put
into concealing their inabilities, the more toxic the meeting becomes. One of the most
common creativity-faking tactics is when someone puts their hands in prayer position and
conceals their mouth while they nod at you and say, 'Mmmmmm. Interesting.' If pressed,
they’ll add, 'I’ll have to get back to you on that.' Then they don’t say anything else. –Douglas
Coupland

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. –Douglas Coupland,
Shampoo Planet

As you grow older, it becomes harder to feel 100 percent happy; you learn all the things that
can go wrong; you become superstitious about tempting fate, about bringing disaster upon
your life by accidentally feeling too good one day. –Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

"All families are psychotic. Everybody has basically the same family - it's just reconfigured
slightly different from one to the next." –Douglas Coupland

"Maybe memories are like karaoke - where you realize up on the stage, with all those lyrics
scrawling across the screen's bottom, and with everybody clapping at you, that you didn't
know even half the lyrics to your all-time favorite song. Only afterwards, when someone else is
up on stage humiliating themselves amid the clapping and laughing, do you realize that what
you liked most about your favorite song was precisely your ignorance of its full meaning- and
you read more into it than maybe existed in the first place. I think it's better to not know the
lyrics to your life. " –Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief: A Novel

"My secret is that I need God--that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to
help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no
longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love." –
Douglas Coupland, Life After God

"And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't
ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never
fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You
wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened." –Douglas Coupland

"In periods of rapid personal change, we pass through life as though we are spellcast. We
speak in sentences that end before finishing. We sleep heavily because we need to ask so
many questions as we dream alone. We bump into others and feel bashful at recognizing souls
so similar to ourselves." –Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

"Please stop putting quotes from Nietzsche at the end of your emails. Five years ago you were
laughing your guts out over American Pie 2. What — suddenly you’ve magically turned into
Noam Chomsky?" –Douglas Coupland, JPod

"A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age ... pretty much constantly
dreams of being able to escape from their lives. They don't want to be who they are any more.
They want out. This list includes Thurston Howell the Third, Ann-Margret, the cast members of
Rent, Václav Havel, space shuttle astronauts and Snuffleupagus. It's universal." –Douglas
Coupland, The Gum Thief: A Novel

“Eroticize intelligence.” –Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

"In the end, I think the relationships that survive in this world are the ones where two people
can finish each other's sentences. Forget drama and torrid sex and the clash of opposites. Give
me banter any day of the week. " –Douglas Coupland

"...we're told by TV and Reader's Digest that a crisis will trigger massive personal change--and
that those big changes will make the pain worthwhile. But from what he could see, big change
almost never happens. People simply feel lost. They have no idea what to say or do or feel or
think. they become messes and tend to remain messes." –Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief: A
Novel

"When someone tells you they’ve just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no
longer have a personality. You can immediately assume so many things: that they’re locked
into jobs they hate; that they’re broke; that they spend every night watching videos; that
they’re fifteen pounds overweight; that they no longer listen to new ideas. It’s profoundly
depressing. " –Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

"Destiny is what we work toward. The future doesn't exist yet. Fate is for losers!" –Douglas
Coupland, Girlfriend in a Coma

"And in his heart, I think, he's now learned what I came to believe, which is, as I've said all
along, that the sun may burn brightly, and the faces of children may be plump and achingly
sweet, but in the air we breathe, in the water we drink and in the food we share, there will
always be darkness in this world."" –Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!

"This was not a good idea coming home for Christmas. I'm too old. Years ago, coming back
from schools or trips, I always expected some sort of new perspective or fresh insight about
the family on returning. That doesn't happen anymore-the days of revelation about my
parents, at least, are over... its time to move on. I think we'd all appreciate that." –Douglas
Coupland, Generation X

"I think of how the person who needs the other person the least in a relationship is the
stronger member." –Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

"I believe that you've had most of your important memories by the time you're thirty. After
that, memory becomes water overflowing into an already full cup. New experiences just don't
register in the same way or with the same impact. I could be shooting heroin with the Princess
of Wales, naked in a crashing jet, and the experience still couldn't compare to the time the
cops chased us after we threw the Taylors' patio furniture into their pool in eleventh grade." –
Douglas Coupland

"Our conversations are never easy, but as I-we-get older, we are finding that our conversations
must bespoken. A need burns inside us to share with others what we are feeling Beyond a
certain age, sincerity ceases to feel pornographic. It is as though the coolness that marked out
youth is itself a type of retrovirus that can only leave you feeling empty. Full of holes." –
Douglas Coupland, Life After God

"As far as I can see, Janet, life is just an endless banquet of loss, and each time a new loss is
doled out, you have to move your mental furniture around, throw things out, and by then
there's more loss, and the cycle goes on and on.” –Douglas Coupland, All Families Are
Psychotic
"The painful things seemed like knots on a beautiful necklace, necessary for keeping the beads
in place." –Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

“If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen
carefully. Stories about food show a strong connection. Wistful silences demonstrate
unfinished business. The more a daughter knows about the details of her mother's life -
without flinching or whining - the stronger the daughter." –Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

"My mother wanted us to understand that the tragedies of your life one day have to potential
to be the comic stories the next." –Nora Ephron

"No one fights dirtier or more brutally than blood; only family knows it’s own weaknesses, the
exact placement of the heart. The tragedy is that one can still live with the force of hatred, feel
infuriated that once you are born to another, that kinship lasts through life and death,
immutable, unchanging, no matter how great the misdeed or betrayal. Blood cannot be
denied, and perhaps that’s why we fight tooth and claw, because we cannot—being only
human—put asunder what God has joined together." –Whitney Otto, How to Make an American
Quilt

"The best men tell you the truth because they think you can take it; the worst men either try to
preserve you in some innocent state with their false protection, or are ‘brutally honest.’ When
someone tells, lets you think for yourself, experience your own emotions, he is treating you as
a true equal, a friend…And the best men cook for you." –Whitney Otto, How to Make an
American Quilt

"…brotherhood of the firstborn, which can be both a blessing and a curse: the overwhelming
attention to the detail of their lives and development. The expectations that run too high:
being the bridge between adults and children, one foot in either place and the accompanying
hollow lonely feeling of being nowhere." –Whitney Otto, How to Make an American Quilt

"We have advantages. We have a cushion to fall back on. This is abundance. A luxury of place
and time. Something rare and wonderful. It's almost historically unprecedented. We must do
extraordinary things. We have to. It would be absurd not to." –Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking
Work of Staggering Genius

Whatever I do, however I find a way to live, I will tell these stories. I have spoken to every
person I have encountered these last difficult days...I speak to these people, and I speak to you
because I cannot help it. It gives me strength, almost unbelievable strength, to know that you
are there. I covet your eyes, your ears, the collapsible space between us. How blessed are we
to have each other? I am alive and you are alive and so we must fill the air with our words. I
will fill today, tomorrow, every day until I am taken back to God. I will tell stories to people who
will listen and to people who don't want to listen, to people who seek me out and to those who
run. All the while I will know that you are there. How can I pretend that you do not exist? It
would be almost as impossible as you pretending that I do not exist." –Dave Eggers, What Is
the What

"We feel that to reveal embarrassing or private things, we have given someone something,
that, like a primitive person fearing that a photographer will steal his soul, we identify our
secrets, our past and their blotches, with our identity, that revealing our habits or losses or
deeds somehow makes one less of oneself. " –Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of
Staggering Genius

"We are the bright new stars born of a screaming black hole, the nascent suns burst from the
darkness, from the grasping void of space that folds and swallows--a darkness that would
devour anyone not as strong as we. We are oddities, sideshows, talk show subjects. We
capture everyone's imagination." –Dave Eggers, A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

"I like the dark part of the night, after midnight and before four-thirty, when it's hollow, when
ceilings are harder and farther away. Then I can breathe, and can think while others are
sleeping, in a way can stop time, can have it so – this has always been my dream – so that
while everyone else is frozen, I can work busily about them, doing whatever it is that needs to
be done, like the elves who make the shoes while children sleep." –Dave Eggers, A
Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

"Humans are divided between those who can still look through the eyes of youth and those
who cannot." –Dave Eggers, What Is the What

"The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another." –
William James

"[There are, in us,] possibilities that take our breath away, and show a world wider than either
physics of philstine ethics can imagine. Here is a world in which all is well, in spite of certain
forms of death, indeed because of certain forms of death, death of hope, death of strength,
death of responsibility, of fear and wrong, death of everything that paganism, naturalism and
legalism pin their trust on." –William James

"Actions seems to follow feeling, but really actions and feeling go together; and by regulating
the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the
feeling, which is not. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be
lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there." –
William James

"Compared to what we ought to be, we are only half awake. We are making use of only a small
part of our physical and mental resources. Stating that the thing broadly, the human individual
thus lives far within his limits. He possesses powers of various sorts which he habitually fails to
use." –William James

"When all is said and done, we are in the end absolutely dependent on the universe; and into
sacrifices and surrenders of some sort, deliberately looked at and accepted, we are drawn and
pressed as into our only permanent positions of repose. Now in those states of mind which fall
short of religion, the surrender is submitted to as an imposition of necessity, and the sacrifice
is undergone at the very best without complaint. In the religious life, on the contrary,
surrender and sacrifice are positively espoused: even unnecessary givings-up are added in
order that the happiness may increase. Religion thus makes easy and felicitous what in any
case is necessary." –William James

"Nothing is so fatiguing as the eternal hanging on of an uncompleted task." –William James

"Action may not always bring happiness, but there is no happiness without action. " –William
James

“Wherever you are, it is your friends who make your world.” –William James

"To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past
slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.” –William James

"...do every day or two something for no other reason that you would rather not do it, so that
when the hour of dire need draws nigh, it may find you not unnerved and untrained to stand
the test." –William James

"Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way." –
William James

"The greatest use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." –William James

"Human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects
of their lives." –William James

"“We don’t laugh because we’re happy, we’re happy because we laugh.” –William James

"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." –William James

"Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create the fact." –
William James

"The greatest discovery of any generation is that a human can alter his life by altering his
attitude." –William James

"Common sense and a sense of humor are the same thing, moving at different speeds. A sense
of humor is just common sense, dancing." –William James

"That’s the thing with the young these days, isn’t it? They watch too many happy endings.
Everything has to be wrapped up, with a smile and a tear and a wave. Everyone has learned,
found love, seen the error of their ways, discovered the joys of monogamy, or fatherhood, or
filial duty, or life itself. In my day, people got shot at the end of films, after learning only that
life is hollow, dismal, brutish, and short." –Nick Hornby, Long Way Down

"I'm a good person. In most ways. But I'm beginning to think that being a good person in most
ways doesn't count for anything very much, if your a bad person in one way." –Nick Hornby,
How to be Good

"If you really wanted to mess me up, you should have got to me earlier." –Nick Hornby, High
Fidelity

"Once you stop pretending that everything's shitty and you can't wait to get out of it...then it
gets more painful, not less. Telling yourself life is shit is like an anesthetic, and when you stop
taking the Advil, then you really can tell how much it hurts, and where, and it's not like that
kind of pain does anyone a whole lot of good. " –Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down

We all spend so much time not saying what we want, because we know we can't have it. And
because it sounds ungracious, or ungrateful, or disloyal, or childish, or banal. Or because we're
so desperate to pretend that things are OK, really, that confessing to ourselves they're not
looks like a bad move. Go on, say what you want. ... Whatever it is, say it to yourself. The truth
will set you free. Either that or it'll get you a punch in the nose. Surviving in whatever life
you're living means lying, and lying corrodes the soul, so take a break from the lies for just one
minute." –Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down

" Maybe we all live life at too high a pitch, those of us who absorb emotional things all day, and
as mere consequence we can never feel merely content: we have to be unhappy, or
ecstatically, head-over-heels happy, and those states are difficult to achieve within a stable,
solid relationship." –Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

"Love, it turns out, is as undemocratic as money, so it accumulates around people who have
plenty of it already: the sane, the healthy, the lovable." –Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

"People worry about kids playing with guns, and teenagers watching violent videos; we are
scared that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobodies worries about kids
listening to thousands - literally thousands - of songs about broken hearts and rejection and
pain and misery and loss." –Nick Hornby, High Fidelity

“Because our hearts are unprepared for truth, we cling to the deception as a shipwreck victim
on a storm-tossed sea will grab at anything that floats. But the splintered rubble of our broken
trust - those temporary buoys of our shattered dreams - betray us, gouging rough gashes into
our souls, drawing our blood and leaving us to sink." –Penelope J. Stokes

"Tom has a theory that homosexuals and single women in their thirties have natural bonding:
both being accustomed to disappointing their parents and being treated as freaks by society."
–Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

“It is a truth universally acknowledged that as soon as one part of your life starts looking up,
another falls to pieces.” –Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary
“It doesn’t take a whole long life to realize that what we deserve to have, we rarely get.” –Jodi
Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper

"That’s what religion does. It points a finger. It causes wars. It breaks apart countries. It’s a
petri dish for stereotypes to grow in. Religion’s not about being holy...Just holier-than-thous." –
Jodi Picoult, Change of Heart

"If God wanted us to act on instinct, we wouldn't have the power of reason." –Jodi Picoult,
Mercy

"There are two kinds of love...in the safe kind you look for someone who's exactly like you. It's
what most folks settle for. But then there's the other kind of love. Everyone's born with a
ragged edge, and some folks crave that piece that's a perfect fit. You'll search for it forever, if
you have to. And if you're lucky enough to find it, it looks so right, you start to tear at your own
seams, thinking, maybe I could look just as perfect. But then, of course, when you try to get
close to their other half, you don't fit anymore. That kind of love...you come out of it a different
person than you were when you started." –Jodi Picoult, Vanishing Acts

"I didn't want to see her because it would make me feel better. I came because without her,
it's hard to remember who I am..." –Jodi Picoult, My Sister’s Keeper

"A man should live his life a certain way not because of some divine authority, but because of
a personal moral obligation to himself and others." –Jodie Picoult

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