Douglas Coupland

Depression is when you have lots of love, but no one's taking.

Flying dreams mean that you're doing the right thing with your life.

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

There's a lot to be said for having a small manageable dream.

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.

I'm starting to wonder if pop culture is in its dying days, because everyone is able to customize their own lives with the images they want to see and the words they want to read and the music they listen to. You don't have the broader trends like you used to.

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.

I think way back, the '20s or the '30s, when Kodak came out with the Brownie and they put a list of instructions on the box, like how to use this thing, I think someone arbitrarily said, 'Make sure the person in the photograph is smiling.' And we went from that one sort of set of industrial instructions to this whole culture of perkiness.

There used to be a tradition of the loveable rogue who would steal from the honour boxes in churches and buy a round of drinks with the money he snagged. And everyone would find him tremendously good company. But not any more.

There's nothing cure or funny or lovable about being cheap. It's a total turn-off.

Comedy is the difference between how you see a person and how they see themselves.

Everyone should have a tailor. David Wilkes, the guy who does my stuff, is like, 'Well you're a writer - do you want a special pen compartment or something?' Bespoke: That's the term you want to get out there.