"And my friends are better prepared mentally than anybody else for the future that is actually going to arrive... me and my friends are throwing-out consultants. Wish us all luck; we send you resumes and kisses." -Douglas Coupland, Shampoo Planet

"A life of abundance had turned her two boys into an element other than gold-- lead? silicon? bismuth? But then Sarah-- Sarah was an element finer than gold-- carbon crystallized as diamond-- a bolt of lightning frozen in midflash, sliced into strips, and stored in a vault."
-Douglas Coupland, All Families Are Psychotic

After the canyon we drove the two miles up Capilano Road to Grouse Mountain, where I spent many of my teenage years skiing. We rode the tramway to the top; our gondola was full of forty-three senior citizens. These were the "Rambling Rovers" of Coeur D'Alene, Idaho: forty-three teensy little people like Franklin Mint figurines with white hair, all wearing blue rayon baseball jackets. These old people were, in fact, all so identical that it spooked us. The German reporter and I wondered if that was our fate, no matter how hard we tried, to become a Rambling Rover roaming the world in pursuit of meaning from within an Evergreen Coachline bus with Oregon license plates.
-Douglas Coupland, The German Reporter