Douglas Coupland cytaty

strona 2

„Ludzie najbardziej boją się myśli, że sami zaczną coś zmieniać w swoim życiu.”

„Ludzie zwykle cieszą się, kiedy w ich życiu zachodzą zmiany – znoszą katastrofy tak dzielnie, że nikt nie spodziewałby się tego po nich w zwykłych okolicznościach.”

„Ptaki udowadniają nam, że istnieje lepsze, prostsze życie, może nawet na wyciągnięcie ręki.”

„Bo kiedyś spodziewaliśmy się najgorszego. Ale potem najgorsze się przytrafiło, prawda? Więc już nigdy nas nie zaskoczy.”

„Człowiek to jedyne zwierzę, które potrafi odczuwać smutek rozłożony liniowo na osi czasu. Naszym przekleństwem jako gatunku jest, że zostaliśmy uwięzieni przez czas, że musimy interpretować życie jako szereg następujących po sobie wydarzeń, jako historię – i że kiedy nie potrafimy zrozumieć, na czym polega ta historia, czujemy się zagubieni.”

„Tylu ludzi nie ma teraz własnego życia, że naprawdę warto się zastanowić, czy przypadkiem nie powstaje nowy styl życia, i to na tak wielką skalę, że trudno już traktować to w kategoriach moralnych.”

„Czy często ktoś obcy ratuje nas z opresji? Czy w ogóle ktokolwiek kiedykolwiek nas ratuje? I jak to jest, że wycieka z nas cała zdolność do przebaczania i dobroci – tak z nas wycieka, że jeden drobny miłosierny uczynek pozostaje w pamięci na całe życie? W jaki sposób do tego dochodzimy? To właśnie sobie myślę, wspominając ogorzałą twarz włóczęgi spod Indio, kiedy zastanawiam się nad moim światem – jego twarz przekonuje mnie, że zawsze jest, w co wierzyć, gdy nie ma już, w co wierzyć. To twarz dla ludzi, takich jak ja, popchniętych na samą krawędź samotności, może nawet zepchniętych w dół, którzy, gdy wdrapali się z powrotem na górę, zobaczyli zupełnie już zmieniony świat.”

„Kiedy człowiek jest młody, ciągle wydaje mu się, że świat zaraz się skończy. Potem człowiek starzeje się, świat jakoś daje sobie radę, trzeba zrewidować swoje poglądy na apokalipsę i własny stosunek do życia i śmierci. Człowiek uświadamia sobie, że świat rzeczywiście będzie trwał dalej, czy z nim, czy bez niego, czy bez tego, co widzi w swojej głowie. I człowiek zaczyna próbować zrozumieć to, co tam widzi.”

“Compromise is said to be the way of the world and yet I find myself feeling sick trying to accept what it has done to me.”

“Jason once told me that eye contact is the most intimacy two people can have -- forget sex -- because the optic nerve is technically an extension of the brain, and when two people look into each other's eyes, it's brain-to-brain.”

“Question: If there were two of you which one would win?”

“As the expression goes, we spend our youth attaining wealth, and our wealth attaining youth.”

“Sometimes you can't realize you're in a bad mood until another person enters your orbit.”

“If you don't change, then what's the point of anything happening to you? It'll still be happening to an unchanged person.”

“I saw doves and I thought they were rocks, but they were asleep. My breath made them stir, and they rocks took flight, the earth exploding… and my only thought was that I wanted you to see them, too.”

“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.”

“Remember how, back in 1990, if you used a cellphone in public you looked like a total asshole? We're all assholes now.”

“Only the disenfranchised can party with abandon.”

“As I'm never going to be old, I'm glad that I never lost my sense of wonder about the world, although I have a hunch it would have happened pretty soon. I loved the world, its beauty and bigness as well as its smallness.”

“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.”

“Do you ever just want to take your car out onto the highway and gun the engine as fast
as you can and then close your eyes and see what happens?”

“I would like to fall in love again but my only hope is that love doesn't happen to me so often after this. I don't want to get so used to falling in love that i get curious to experience something more extreme - whatever that may be.”

“One of the cruelest things you can do to another person is pretend you care about them more than you really do.”

“There is no shame in impulse.”

“Life always kills you in the end, but first it prevents you from getting what you want.”

“If he'd learned one thing while he'd been away, it was that loneliness is the most taboo subject in the world. Forget sex or politics or religion. Or even failure. Loneliness is what clears out a room.”

“Lists only spell out the things that can be taken away from us by moths and rust and thieves. If something is valuable, don't put it in a list. Don't even say the words.”

“Beyond a certain age, sincerity ceases to feel pornographic.”

“Letting go of randomness is one of the hardest decisions a person can make.”

“Do you remember how you felt at seventeen? I do and I don't (…) Imagine you came from outer space and someone showed you a butterfly and a caterpillar. Would you ever put the two of them together? That's me and my memories.”

“Happy. And then I got afraid that it would vanish as quickly as it came. That it was accidental-- that I didn't deserve it. It's like this very, very nice car crash that never ends.”

“We're all born lost, aren't we? We're all born separated from God - over and over life makes sure to inform us of this - and yet we're all real: we have names, we have lives. We mean something. We must.”

“I curled myself into a ball and cried quietly, doing that thing that only young people can do, namely, feeling sorry for myself. Once you're past thirty you lose that ability; instead of feeling sorry for yourself you turn bitter.”

“People who advocate simplicity have money in the bank; the money came first, not the simplicity. (from inside the cover)”

“Books turn people into isolated individuals, and once that's happened, the road only grows rockier. Books wire you to want to be Steve McQueen, but the world wants you to be SMcQ23667bot@hotmail. com.”

“The modern world is devoted to vanishing species, vanishing weather and vanishing capacity for wonder.”

“What is human behavior, except trying to prove that we're not animals?”