x dismiss this message
Did you know you can edit this page?
-
Sign Into Shelfari
-
Choose something to edit
-
Save your contributions
see page history
Description edit
“Now you young twerps want a new name for your generation? Probably not, you just want jobs, right? Well, the media do us all such tremendous favors when they call you Generation X, right? Two clicks from the very end of the alphabet. I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning... read more
Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit
Characters/People edit
- Zack: Add a description of this character.
- Diana
- Serge
- Samantha
- Julien
- Craig
- Finbar
- Erik
- Bartholomew
- Trevor
- Louise
- Brenda
- Jacques
- Andrea
- Jessica
- Mitch
- Barry
- Charles
- Kimberly
- Yoda
- Sandra
- Superman
- Roy
- Hari
- Lisa
- Leslie
- Johnny Hallyday
- Karen
- Hemesh
- Stella
- Dr. Rick
- Sean
- Kayla
- Coffinshark
- Jay
- Chloe
- Bev
- Masset
- Ronald Reagan
- Maizie
Quotes edit
-
“Corn is a fucking nightmare. A thousand years ago it was a stem of grass with one scuzzy little kernel; now it's a bloated, foot-long buttery carb dildo.”
Zack -
“I hate the way our bodies move through the world, clip-clop, like beef marionettes. I hate how the world has turned into one massive hamburger-making machine, how the world is only about people now—everything else on the planet must bow to our will because there's no longer any other option.”
Julien -
“…when something genuinely cosmic happens to you, your tendency is to believe the experience isn't real.”
Samantha -
“…sometimes not giving a shit keeps things lively. For example, a while back I went through this phase where I totally didn't give a rat's ass about anything, so just to mess things up, I wore eyeliner for a week, and raggedy old clothing. Net result: chick magnet. I'd go to convenience stores and hurl myself at the windows in an attempt to make them shatter…there's even some security-cam footage of it somewhere in flickr world. Net result: chick magnet plus cool reputation. There's a lot to be said for not giving two flying fucks, Mr. Darwin.”
Zack -
“Fame without the money to insulate you from it is one of the most wretched human conditions possible.”
Samantha -
“I guess that's what all sci-fi is about in the end: societies competing for survival.”
Julien -
“Finally my life was a story. My days would no longer feel like a video game that resets to zero every time I wake up, and then begs for coins.”
Julien -
“What a marvel to be among the fewest of few molecules in the universe allowed to experience this thing called life—stars and nebulas and black holes by the quadrillion, and yet only a few molecules on Earth get to be alive.”
Harj -
“Stories come from a part of you that only gets visited rarely—sometimes never at all. I think most people spend so much time trying to convince themselves that their lives are stories that the actual story-creating part of their brains hardens and dies. People forget that there are other ways of ordering the world.”
Serge -
“…why do most of us make such boring choices for the stories of our lives? How hard can it be to change gears and say, *You know what? Instead of inventing and telling stories, I'm going to make my life a more interesting story.*”
Diana -
“The only thing our diseased culture believes in is fame. No other form of eternity exists. Kill the famous and you kill the core of the diseased culture.”
Diana (story) -
“Six silent people in a room got me to thinking about the voice we hear in our heads when we read, the universal narrator's voice you may well be hearing right now. Whose voice *is* it you're hearing? It's not your own, is it? I didn't think so. It never is.”
Samantha -
“Bartholomew was obsessed with new additions to the language. He was particularly incensed by things that caused language to change or evolve. He worked as a copy checker for a large business magazine and spent his lunch hours and weekends writing acid-tipped hate mail to other magazines that incorporated any noun or verb that had entered the language since the dawn of digital culture. *Can't you see how you're diluting the language? Corrupting it! Tell me, what is a jpeg? What a sick and diseased and laughable word it is—it's not even a word! It's a sound effect; a glottal sideshow freak. It's a bastard word—a bearded lady of a word.*”
Julien (story) -
“Sir, when the humans read books, it gives them a sense of individuality, a sense of being unique—a sense that something about their existence is special or, as they like to say, 'magical.'”
Diana (story) -
“So many things begin and end with the sea, do they not? Sailors vanish. Boats sink. Jewels are thrown to its bottom. The bad woman drowns. Life crawls from its glinting waters and draws air into its lungs and joins the land forever.”
Harj
-
Ideology is for people who don’t trust their own experiences and perceptions of the world.”
Highlighted by 24 Kindle customers -
What is prayer but a wish for the events in your life to string together to form a story—something that makes some sense of events you know have meaning.
Highlighted by 21 Kindle customers -
What a marvel to be among the fewest of few molecules in the universe allowed to experience this thing called life—stars and nebulas and black holes by the quadrillion, and yet only a few molecules on Earth get to be alive.
Highlighted by 17 Kindle customers -
“People always seem to fall in love during that magical space before one person sees the other display their signature crazy behaviour.
Highlighted by 16 Kindle customers -
Corn is a fucking nightmare. A thousand years ago it was a stem of grass with one scuzzy little kernel; now it’s a bloated, foot-long, buttery carb dildo.
Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers -
Truly modern citizens are both charismatic and can only respond to other people with charisma. To survive, people need to become self-branding charisma robots. Yet, ironically, society mocks and punishes people who aspire to that state.
Highlighted by 13 Kindle customers -
Finally, my life was a story. My days would no longer feel like a video game that resets to zero every time I wake up, and then begs for coins.
Highlighted by 10 Kindle customers -
“So then, why do most of us make such boring choices for the stories of our lives? How hard can it be to change gears and say, You know what? Instead of inventing and telling stories, I’m going to make my life a more interesting story.”
Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers -
“Blogs? Sorry, but all those blogs and vlogs or whatever’s out there—they just make being unique harder. The more truths you spill out, the more generic you become.”
Highlighted by 9 Kindle customers -
Praying is funny. When you pray, you leave the day-to-day time stream and enter a quieter place that uses different clocks and values things that can’t be seen.
Highlighted by 8 Kindle customers
Organizations edit
First Sentence edit
How can we be alive and not wonder about the stories we use to knit together this place we call the world?
Authors & Contributors edit
- Douglas Coupland (Author)
First Edition edit
Original Language: English
Publisher: Add the publisher.
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: Add the publication date.
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 359
Publisher: Add the publisher.
Country: Add the country of publication.
Publication Date: Add the publication date.
ISBN: Add the ISBN.
Page Count: 359
Classification edit
- Library of Congress: Add the Library of Congress Classification.
- Dewey: 813
Subjects edit
Popular Tags
See all 50 tags
We’re hiding the errata, movie connections, books that influenced this book, books influenced by this book, books that cite this book and books cited by this book sections. If you would like to add content to them, you must first make them visible.
