Here are some passing thoughts. Imagine looking up at the moon and seeing it burning. Imagine seeing the grocery storeโs checkout girl grow horns. Imagine growing younger instead of older. Imagine feeling more powerful and more capable of falling in love with life every new day instead of being scared and sick and not knowing whether to stay under a sheet or venture forth into the cold.
Douglas CouplandEverybody has a โgripping strangerโ in their lives, Andy, a stranger who unwittingly possesses a bizarre hold over you. Maybe itโs the kid in cut-offs who mows your lawn or the woman wearing White Shoulders who stamps your book at the libraryโa stranger who, if you were to come home and find a message from them on your answering machine saying โDrop everything. I love you. Come away with me now to Florida,โ youโd follow them.
Douglas CouplandUnhappy endings are just as important as happy endings. Theyโre an efficient way of transmitting vital Darwinian information. Your brain needs them to make maps of the world, maps that let you know what sorts of people and situations to avoid.
Douglas CouplandPost-adolescent Expert Syndrome The tendency of young people around the age of eighteen, males especially, to become altruistic experts on everything, a state of mind required by nature to ensure warriors who are willing to die with pleasure on the battlefield. Also the reason why religions recruit kamikaze pilots and suicide bombers almost exclusively from the 18-21 range. "Kyle, I never would have guessed that when you were up in your bedroom playing World of Warcraft all through your teens, you were, in fact, becoming an expert on the films of Jean-Luc Godard.
Douglas Coupland