Everybody 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 CouplandFlorida isn't so much a place where one goes to reinvent oneself, as it is a place where one goes if one no longer wished to be found.
Douglas CouplandIn the old days people had far fewer channels in which to place their imaginative time. There's definitely more competition for time . . . and yet people seem to be reading [books] as much.
Douglas CouplandYou really have to wonder why we even bother to get up in the morning. I mean, really: Why work? Simply to buy more stuff? That's just not enough. Look at us all. What's the common assumption that got us all from there to here? What makes us deserve the ice cream and running shoes and wool Italian suits we have? I mean, I see all of us trying so hard to acquire so much stuff, but I can't help but feeling that we didn't merit it.
Douglas CouplandI think it takes an amazing amount of energy to convince oneself that the Forever Person isn't just around the corner. In the end I believe we never do convince ourselves. I know that I found it increasingly hard to maintain the pose of emotional self-sufficiency lying on my bed and sitting at my desk, watching the gulls cartwheeling in the clouds over the bridges, cradling myself in my own arms, breathing warm chocolate-and-vodka breath on a rose I had found on a street corner, trying to force it to bloom.
Douglas Coupland