Douglas Coupland Quotes

Personally, I find visualisations great for helping me understand the world and for sifting the huge amounts of information that deluge me every day.

When the world throws you too much information, the only way you can stay sane or survive is to look for pattern recognition. Amidst all the blurs, is there a constellation that emerges, is there a straight line that's emerging?

Faced with information overload, we have no alternative but pattern-recognition.

For me, writing is a way of thinking. I write in a journal a lot. I'm a very impatient person, so writing and meditation allow me to slow down and watch my mind; they are containers that keep me in place, hold me still.

Here's the thing: If you're monitoring every single thing that goes on in a given culture, if you have all the information that is there to be had, then that is the equivalent of having none of it. How are you going to process that amount of information?

I think it's true we look forward to enormous amounts of information, but I think we would be better off if we thought about the kinds of wisdom and thoughtfulness that we need in order to handle the amount of information ahead.

When information overload occurs, pattern recognition is how to determine truth.

The mind is but the subtle part of the body. You must retain great strength in your mind and words.

I think that's the function of a lot of psychiatrists and therapists, is keeping people afloat just long enough for them to get older.

[Women] tend to collect more pieces of data when they think, put them into more complex patterns, see more options and outcomes. They tend to be contextual, holistic thinkers.

For those who either perceive but dully, or retain the ideas that come into their minds but ill, who cannot readily excite or compound them, will have little matter to think on.

We're flooding people with information. We need to feed it through a processor. A human must turn information into intelligence or knowledge.

When everybody has access to an avalanche of information, becoming a master thinker is very important in your life-long security.

I am a firm believer in 'negative thinking' when used correctly. We need to be AWARE of negatives so that we can steer clear of them. A golfer needs to know where the bunkers and sand traps are - but he doesn't think continuously about the bunker - where he doesn't want to go. His mind glances at the bunker, but he DWELLS upon the green.

Writing helped me understand what I was thinking about.

Feelings, and feelings, and feelings. Let me try thinking instead.

Learn it all, then forget it all.

I don't know what I think about certain subjects, even today, until I sit down and try to write about them.

The television is 'real'. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'.

I could not think without writing.

It requires a strong mind to bear up against several languages. Some persons have learnt so many, that they have ceased to think in any one.

The thought process can never be complete without articulation.

Our minds are so undisciplined that our doubts rule our lives and we don't master our imagination - it masters us.

I think that if you can turn off the mind and look only with the eyes, ultimately everything becomes abstract.

Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.