Douglas Coupland

If money is not maintained, it can collapse like a bridge along Interstate 5 and fixing it, even with determined politicians, will take ages, during which time God only knows how much human damage will occur.

Aliens didn't come down to Earth and give us technology. We invented it ourselves. Therefore it can never be alienating; it can only be an expression of our humanity.

It feels wistful to imagine a time when people didn't go about their daily routine with the assumption that at any moment another massive media technology will be dumped on us by some geek in California.

We want our idols to be dead because it makes death a much less scary place.

I kind of wonder if creativity is all morphing into one big thing that's not even art, but something universal and bigger.

The one thing about my life that's different from others is that I wake up for no one, and for some reason, that's just good for your creativity.

Books arrive in my head all at once, and then it becomes an 18-month process of getting it all down on paper.

I'm a visual thinker. Research tells us that only 20 per cent of people think visually. So what about the other 80 per cent? Don't they think in pictures? I mean if you imagine washing and preparing potatoes you visualise the process, right?

You can't fake creativity, competence, or sexual arousal.

The modern economy isn't about the redistribution of wealth, it's about the redistribution of time.

Art was always my main focus; I fell into writing by accident in the 1980s, writing magazine articles to pay for my studio. I have to put myself into the position of writing; sometimes it doesn't work, and sometimes it works great.

I'm suspicious of places that look decorated. I can understand why people do it, but you see too many cushions or a piece of fabric hanging and it's, like, 'Ugh!' A good house with good art will always work, no matter what.