“...and when you meet someone and fall in love, and they fall in love with you, you ask them "Will you take my heart-- stains and all?" and they say "I will," and they ask you the same question and you say, "I will," too.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“I saw doves and I thought they were rocks, but they were asleep. My breath made them stir, and they rocks took flight, the earth exploding... and my only thought was that I wanted you to see them, too.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“I used to care about how other people thought I led my life. But lately I've realized that most people are too preoccupied with their own lives to give anybody else even the scantiest of thoughts.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“Letting go of randomness is one of the hardest decisions a person can make.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“Happy. And then I got afraid that it would vanish as quickly as it came. That it was accidental-- that I didn't deserve it. It's like this very, very nice car crash that never ends.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“It's starts out young- you try not be different just to survive- you try to be just like everyone else- anonymity becomes reflexive- and then one day you wake up and you've become all those other people- the others- the something you aren't. And you wonder if you can ever be what it is you really are. Or you wonder if it's too late to find out.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“It's like male geeks don't know how to deal with real live women, so they just assume it's a user interface problem. Not their fault. They'll just wait for the next version to come out- something more "user friendly.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“What is human behavior, except trying to prove that we're not animals?”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“Beware of the corporate invasion of private memory.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“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.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“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”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“I say ‘Uhmm...’ a lot. I mentioned this to Karla and she says it’s a CPU word. It means you’re assembling data in your head - spooling.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“But then a bumblebee bumbled above us and it stole our attention the way flying things can.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“What's a bar bill but a surtax on reality?”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“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?”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“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.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“I ma trying to feel more well adjusted than I really am, which is, I guess, the human condition.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“Face it: You're always just a breath away from a job in telemarketing.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“The belief that tomorrow is a different place from today is certainly a unique hallmark of our species.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“I wondered what it was to pray, because it was something I have never learned to do, and all I remember is falling.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“We can no longer create the feeling of an era...of time being particular to one spot in time.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“...most guys have about 73 calories of shopping energy, and once these calories are gone, they're gone for the day - if not the week - and can't be regenerated simply by having an Orange Julius at the Food Fair.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“Maybe thinking you're supposed to 'have a life' is a stupid way of buying into an untenable 1950s narrative of what life *supposed* to be. How do we know that all of these people with 'no lives' aren't really on the new frontier of human sentience and preceptions?”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“What is the search for the next great compelling application but a search for the human identity?”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“If somebody wants to run for office, they had better to explain why they want to run for office. Wanting to be a candidate seems, in itself, reason for exclusion.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“I don't want to lose you. I can't imagine ever feeling this
strongly about anything or anybody ever again. This was unexpected, my
soul's connection to you.
You stole my loneliness
No one knows that I was wishing for you, a thief, to enter my
house of autonomy, that I had locked my doors but my
Windows were open, hoping, but not believing, you
would enter.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“Susan, nonetheless, wanted to know why she was having such a dating problem. Dusty said, "I think your problem is that you think everyone else is a freak except you, but everybody's a freak- you included- and once you learn that, the World of Dating is yours.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“Abe: Wise hermit cast adrift on asteroid for thousands of years; has developed odd code languages for everyday actions; lonely but not bitter; his heart is cryogenically frozen, and he must search the universe pursuing the Thawer.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“In the spirit of Ethan's neurosis, we made a drywall list of keyboard buttons we would like to see: PLEASE, THANK YOU, FUCK OFF, DIE, OOPS...MY MISTAKE, DO SOMETHING COOL AND SURPRISE ME .”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
“Abe said something interesting. He said that because everyone's so poor these days, the '90s will be a decade with no architectural legacy or style- everyone's too poor to put up new buildings. He said that code is the architecture of the '90s.”
― Douglas Coupland, quote from Microserfs
Douglas Coupland
Born place: in CFB Baden-Söllingen, Germany
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“Archbishop. Why do I never read the lesson?”
“I beg your pardon, ma’am?”
“In church. Everybody else gets to read and one never does. It’s not laid down, is it? It’s not off-limits?”
“Not that I’m aware, ma’am.”
“Good. Well in that case I’m going to start. Leviticus, here I come. Goodnight.”
The archbishop shook his head and went back to Strictly Come Dancing.”
― Alan Bennett, quote from The Uncommon Reader
“After ten months of infantry training, I realized my survival would depend on the men around me. Airborne troopers looked like I had always pictured a group of soldiers: hard, lean, bronzed, and tough. When they walked down the street, they appeared to be a proud and cocky bunch exhibiting a tolerant scorn for anyone who was not airborne.”
― Dick Winters, quote from Beyond Band of Brothers: The War Memoirs of Major Dick Winters
“Stay here!" he commanded me, then he raced off after Cal.
I stopped for just a moment. Then I ran after them.”
― Cate Tiernan, quote from Sweep: Volume 1
“The literal mind is baffled by the ironic one, demanding explanations that only intensify the joke. A vintage example, and one that really did occur, is that of P.G. Wodehouse, captured by accident during the German invasion of France in 1940. Josef Goebbels’s propaganda bureaucrats asked him to broadcast on Berlin radio, which he incautiously agreed to do, and his first transmission began:
Young men starting out in life often ask me—“How do you become an internee?” Well, there are various ways. My own method was to acquire a villa in northern France and wait for the German army to come along. This is probably the simplest plan. You buy the villa and the German army does the rest.
Somebody—it would be nice to know who, I hope it was Goebbels—must have vetted this and decided to let it go out as a good advertisement for German broad-mindedness. The “funny” thing is that the broadcast landed Wodehouse in an infinity of trouble with the British authorities, representing a nation that prides itself above all on a sense of humor.”
― Christopher Hitchens, quote from Letters to a Young Contrarian
“Thank you for keeping her safe," Elliott tells Will.
"I will always keep her safe.”
― Bethany Griffin, quote from Masque of the Red Death
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