Handmade presents are scary because they reveal that you have too much free time.

— Douglas Coupland

Hi! I'm Ethan, I shop at Ikea. I bought a $300 dining suite, and it took me three days to assemble!

— Douglas Coupland

Humans are part of nature, and nature is one great big wood chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones, and hair.

— Douglas Coupland

I began doing writing projects and art and design projects to explore a new way of seeing Canada. Roots is one more way of continuing this exploration. I want to present a wide-open Canadian sense of color, adventure, communication and openness that defines our country.

— Douglas Coupland

I decided at 40 I was wasting entire chunks of my brain and didn't want to blow my one chance on Earth. I'm glad I made that decision. Writing is largely about time, while visual art is largely about space. Sometimes, as with film, you can hybridize, but I think it's basically the space part of my brain wanting equal footing with the time part.

— Douglas Coupland

I don't deserve a soul, yet I still have one. I know because it hurts.

— Douglas Coupland

I don't know how anyone gets anything done in cities. How can you live somewhere like London or New York, when there are 81 things to do every night? Awful. Give me solitude and space any time.

— Douglas Coupland

I don't think anyone ever gets over anything in life they merely get used to it.

— Douglas Coupland

I'd sooner have died than admit that the most valuable thing I owned was a fairly extensive collection of German industrial music dance mix EP records stored for even further embarrassment under a box of crumbling Christmas tree ornaments in a Portland, Oregon basement. So I told him I owned nothing of any value.

— Douglas Coupland

If a building looks better under construction than it does when finished, then it's a failure.

— Douglas Coupland