Regina > Regina's Quotes

“Curiosity, especially intellectual inquisitiveness, is what separates the truly alive from those who are merely going through the motions.”
― Tom Robbins

“The surface of the Earth itself is an immense loom upon which the sun weaves the fabric of existence. ”
― Wade Davis

“And then I felt sad because I realized that once people are broken in certain ways, they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one. You wonder when your turn is going to be, or if it's already happened.”
― Douglas Coupland, Life After God

“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.”
― Douglas Coupland

“When you're young, you always feel that life hasn't yet begun—that "life" is always scheduled to begin next week, next month, next year, after the holidays—whenever. But then suddenly you're old and the scheduled life didn't arrive. You find yourself asking, 'Well then, exactly what was it I was having—that interlude—the scrambly madness—all that time I had before?”
― Douglas Coupland, Life After God

“Time ticks by; we grow older. Before we know it, too much time has passed and we've missed the chance to have had other people hurt us. To a younger me this sounded like luck; to an older me this sounds like a quiet tragedy.”
― Douglas Coupland, Life After God

“Remember: the time you feel lonely is the time you most need to be by yourself. Life's cruelest irony.”
― Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

“Here's my theory about meetings and life: the three things you can't fake are erections, competence and creativity.”
― Douglas Coupland, JPod

“All families are psychotic. Everybody has basically the same family - it's just reconfigured slightly different from one to the next.”
― Douglas Coupland, All Families are Psychotic

“maybe memories are like karaoke-where you realize up on the stage, with all those lyrics scrawling across the screen's bottom, and with everybody clapping at you, that you didn't know even half the lyrics to your all-time favourite song. Only afterwards, when someone else is up on stage humiliating themselves amid the clapping and laughing, do you realize that what you liiked most about your favourite song was precisely your ignorance of its full meaning- and you read more into it than maybe existed in the first place. I think it's better to not know the lyrics to your life.”
― Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief

“When someone tells you they’ve just bought a house, they might as well tell you they no longer have a personality. You can immediately assume so many things: that they’re locked into jobs they hate; that they’re broke; that they spend every night watching videos; that they’re fifteen pounds overweight; that they no longer listen to new ideas. It’s profoundly depressing. ”
― Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

“I realized that once people are broken in certain ways they can't ever be fixed, and this is something nobody ever tells you when you are young and it never fails to surprise you as you grow older as you see the people in your life break one by one.”
― Douglas Coupland, Life After God

“I think if human beings had genuine courage, they'd wear their costumes every day of the year, not just on Halloween. Wouldn't life be more interesting that way? And now that I think about it, why the heck don't they? Who made the rule that everybody has to dress like sheep 364 days of the year? Think of all the people you'd meet if they were in costume every day. People would be so much easier to talk to - like talking to dogs. ”
― Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief

“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.”
― Douglas Coupland

“Dreams don't come true. Dreams die. Dreams get compromised. Dreams end up dealing meth in a booth at the back of the Olive Garden. Dreams choke to death on bay leaves. Dreams get spleen cancer.”
― Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief

“I didn't realize then that so much of being adult is reconciling ourselves with the awkwardness and strangeness of our own feelings. Youth is the time of life lived for some imaginary audience.”
― Douglas Coupland, Girlfriend in a Coma

“...and when you meet someone and fall in love, and they fall in love with you, you ask them "Will you take my heart-- stains and all?" and they say "I will," and they ask you the same question and you say, "I will," too.”
― Douglas Coupland, Microserfs

“Destiny is what we work toward. The future doesn't exist yet. Fate is for losers!”
― Douglas Coupland, Girlfriend in a Coma

“A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age ... pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives. They don't want to be who they are any more. They want out. This list includes Thurston Howell the Third, Ann-Margret, the cat members of Rent, Václav Havel, space shuttle astronauts and Snuffleupagus. It's universal.”
― Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief

“I thought about how odd it is for billions of people to be alive, yet not one of them is really quite sure of what makes people people. The only activities I could think of that humans do that have no animal equivalent were smoking, body-building and writing. That's not much, considering how special we seem to think we are.”
― Douglas Coupland, Life After God

“A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age - regardless of how they look on the outside - pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.”
― Douglas Coupland, The Gum Thief

“So where do you start when you want to start your life again?”
― Douglas Coupland, Hey Nostradamus!

“Eroticize intelligence.”
― Douglas Coupland, Generation X: Tales for an Accelerated Culture

“believe that you've had most of your important memories by the time you're thirty. After that, memory becomes water overflowing into an already full cup. New experiences just don't register in the same way or with the same impact. I could be shooting heroin with the Princess of Wales, naked in a crashing jet, and the experience still couldn't compare to the time the cops chased us after we threw the Taylors' patio furniture into their pool in eleventh grade.”
― Douglas Coupland

“Risk discomfort and solitude for understanding.”
― Wade Davis, The Serpent and the Rainbow: A Harvard Scientist's Astonishing Journey into the Secret Societies of Haitian Voodoo, Zombis, and Magic

“We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.”
― Tom Robbins

“The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being.”
― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

“...disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business....”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.”
― Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

“Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide.”
― Tom Robbins