Douglas Coupland Quotes About Giving
-
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.
→ -
I am going to give you a piece of advice... advice I wish I'd been told in guidance class back in high school, in between the don't-do-acid and don't-drink-and-drive films. I wish our counselors had told us, 'When you grow older a dreadful, horrible sensation will come over you. It's called loneliness, and you think you know what it is now, but you don't. Here is the list of the symptoms, and don't worry—loneliness is the most universal sensation on the planet. Just remember one fact—loneliness will pass. You will survive and you will be a better human for it.
→ -
Chronotropic Drugs:Drugs engineered to affect one's sense of time. Chronodecelocotropic drugs have no short term effect but over time give one the impression that time feels longer. Chronoaccelocotropic drugs have the opposite effect.
→ -
Give parents the tiniest of confidences and they'll use them as crowbars to jimmy you open and rearrange your life with no perspective.
→ -
My secret is that I need God—that I am sick and can no longer make it alone. I need God to help me give, because I no longer seem to be capable of giving; to help me be kind, as I no longer seem capable of kindness; to help me love, as I seem beyond being able to love.
→ -
In the end, I think the relationships that survive in this world are the ones where two people can finish each other's sentences. Forget drama and torrid sex and the clash of opposites. Give me banter any day of the week.
→ -
Give parents the tiniest of confidences and they'll use them as crowbars to jimmy you open and rearrange your life with no perspective. Sometimes I'd just like to mace them. I want to tell them that I envy their upbringings that were so clean, so free of futurelessness. And I want to throttle them for blindly handing over the world to us like so much skid-marked underwear.
→ -
But I guess the nice thing about driving a car is that the physical act of driving itself occupies a good chunk of brain cells that otherwise would be giving you trouble overloading your thinking. New scenery continually erases what came before; memory is lost, shuffled, relabeled and forgotten. Gum is chewed; buttons are pushed; windows are lowered and opened. A fast moving car is the only place where you're legally allowed to not deal with your problems. It's enforced meditation and this is good.
→ -
Never loan a book to someone if you expect to get it back. Loaning books is the same as giving them away.
→ -
The universe hands you opportunities for a while, and if you don't take them, the universe says to itself, 'Oh I see, this person doesn't like opportunities' and stops giving them to you.
→ -
I mean five thousand years ago people emerge out of nowhere -sproing!- with brains and everything and begin wrecking the planet. You'd think we'd give the issue a little more thought than we do.
→ -
I think that every reader on earth has a list of cherished books as unique as their fingerprints... I think that, as you age, you tend to gravitate towards the classics, but those aren't the books that give you the same sort of hope for the world that a cherished book does.
→
Related Authors
-
Nick Hornby Novelist -
Pierre Huyghe Artist -
Jenny Holzer Artist -
Margaret Atwood Poet -
Andy Warhol Artist -
Terry Fox Athlete -
Bret Easton Ellis Novelist -
Irvine Welsh Novelist -
Jay Conrad Levinson Writer -
Maria Semple Novelist -
Robert Kirkman Comic Book Writer -
Ernest Hemingway Author -
Chuck Palahniuk Novelist -
William Gibson Novelist -
Kurt Vonnegut Writer -
William S. Burroughs Novelist -
Marshall McLuhan Philosopher -
Haruki Murakami Writer -
J. G. Ballard Novelist