Quotes by Douglas Coupland

About Douglas Coupland:

Douglas Coupland is a Canadian novelist and artist. His fiction is complemented by recognized works in design and visual art arising from his early formal training. His first novel, the 1991 international bestseller Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture, popularized terms such as McJob and Generation X. He has published thirteen novels, two collections of short stories, seven non-fiction books, and a number of dramatic works and screenplays for film and television. A specific feature of Coupland's novels is their synthesis of postmodern religion, Web 2.0 technology, human sexuality, and pop culture.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

I know it's not cat food, but what exactly is it that they put inside of tinned ravioli?

Douglas Coupland

My father has never once asked me a question, any question. There's a freedom that came from that. It allowed me to create my own way of thinking.

Douglas Coupland

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

Douglas Coupland

Sometimes failure isn't an opportunity in disguise, it's just you.

Douglas Coupland

Big companies are like marching bands. Even if half the band is playing random notes, it still sounds kind of like music. The concealment of failure is built into them.

Douglas Coupland

People are pretty forgiving when it comes to other people's families. The only family that ever horrifies you is your own.

Douglas Coupland

It's very strange that most people don't care if their knowledge of their family history only goes back three generations.

Douglas Coupland

Headwise, I always kind of knew that everyone goes grey in our family very early - and I was like, it works for me. I started growing my beard, and it changes the shape of your skull and your face, and I started seeing my mother's side of the family ...

Douglas Coupland

Characters in a book are very much like personalities divvied up within a family. In the end, it all averages out to a sort of overall averageness.

Douglas Coupland

If you write fiction, you have to love your characters. It's like your family. You don't have to like them, but you have to love them.

Douglas Coupland

Everybody has basically the same family, it's just reconfigured slightly differently from one to the next.

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

Most people have no idea how to politely answer a phone. The English do, and it's been their only major business advantage for the past two centuries.

Douglas Coupland

If human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween.

Douglas Coupland

Human beings are the only animal that thinks they change who they are simply by moving to a different place. Birds migrate, but it's not quite the same thing.

Douglas Coupland

For many people, myself included, the end of the world is happening all the time! It is a form of criticality that paradoxically gives us hope for change and improvement.

Douglas Coupland

If you don't change, then what's the point of anything happening to you?

Douglas Coupland

We really ought to give ourselves a collective pat on the back for doing as well as we have in a universe of constant media change and mutation.

Douglas Coupland

Mediums change you by their very existence. They do this on fundamental levels because they force you to favour certain parts of your brain over others.

Douglas Coupland

The advent of cellphones may, in the end, be no more relevant than the ability of laptops to change our written documents into ones using cool new fonts.

Douglas Coupland

To have a healthy culture, you have to have stable health care financing and stable arts financing and stable sports financing, and if you don't have that, your culture becomes a parking lot.

Douglas Coupland

Author Bio

  • NameDouglas Coupland
  • DescriptionCanadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and graphic designer
  • BornDecember 30, 1961
  • CountryCanada
  • ProfessionWriter; Sculptor; Novelist; Artist; Designer; Screenwriter
  • WorksGeneration X: Tales For An Accelerated Culture; Microserfs; JPod
  • AwardsOfficer Of The Order Of Canada