Douglas Coupland

If you have a great idea, you should be able to communicate it as well. It's like the sound of one hand clapping. You have a great idea but aren't able to express it - well, how great was the idea?

I think most people either forget or don't know that Microsoft only hires people with I.Q.'s well over 130.

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.

Royalty is either going to do very well with cloning, or it's going to disappear completely.

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.

Thinking you're immortal is weirdly similar to being immortal.

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.

Try not thinking of peeling an orange. Try not imagining the juice running down your fingers, the soft inner part of the peel. The smell. Try and you can't. The brain doesn't process negatives.

North America can easily fragment quickly as did the Eastern Bloc in 1989.

In a faraway land called 'pre-2000,' what Earthlings now call blogging was called 'keeping a diary.' It's hard work to do well. I tried doing it in the early 1990s but had to stop because I no longer had a life - instead I had this thing that generated anecdotes to go into my diary. The diary took over and I had to stop.

My question about luging is, How do you get into the luge community to begin with? Is it one day like, 'Mom, Dad, I really want to luge.' And your parents are like: 'O.K., I'll quit my job. We'll move to an Alpine community.'

I think social and moral disengagement is repugnant.