I think that to acknowledge a new generation is to acknowledge some degree of obsolescence in yourself, and that is very hard to do and often comes with undeniable anger.

The real killers in the business world aren't the ones who aim for the top, it's the ones who aim for two notches below the top.

We decided that the French could never write user-friendly software because they're so rude.

It's very strange that most people don't care if their knowledge of their family history only goes back three generations.

Purchased experiences don't count.

I began doing writing projects and art and design projects to explore a new way of seeing Canada. Roots is one more way of continuing this exploration. I want to present a wide-open Canadian sense of color, adventure, communication and openness that defines our country.

You can get a subjective and highly factual dossier on most anyone in the public realm almost instantly. It's why publishers don't worry about author photos any more; people just Google a person and get on with things.

If cats were double the size they are now, they'd probably be illegal.

I think that in the future, clocks won't say three o'clock anymore. They'll just get right to the point and rename three o'clock 'Pepsi.'

I miss my pre-Internet brain, but that doesn't help anything. We can only go forward.

People will always choose more money over more sex.

I think money is due for some sort of collapse. People are going to realize that money has a half-life, like radioactive elements.

Self-delusion is one of the funniest things there is.

Even when you take a holiday from technology, technology doesn't take a break from you.

Clowns drink to blot out the ravages of terrifying children for a living.

Big companies are like marching bands. Even if half the band is playing random notes, it still sounds kind of like music. The concealment of failure is built into them.

Only losers make decisions when things are bad. The time to rejig your life is the time when it's seemingly smooth.

If I think too much about all of those Chinese factories where all the stuff in a Wal-Mart is made, I get that woozy feeling you get when you see ducks covered in crude oil.

My father has never once asked me a question, any question. There's a freedom that came from that. It allowed me to create my own way of thinking.

The things worth writing about, and the things worth reading about, are the things that feel almost beyond description at the start and are, because of that, frightening.

I don't know how anyone gets anything done in cities. How can you live somewhere like London or New York, when there are 81 things to do every night? Awful. Give me solitude and space any time.

We're rapidly approaching a world comprised entirely of jail and shopping.

There are three things we cry about in life, things that are lost, things that are found, and things that are magnificent.

Writing is largely about time, while visual art is largely about space.

Workshops and seminars are basically financial speed dating for clueless people.

As a form of escapism, yearning for the 20th century is understandable, but in practice it would be horrible - sort of like going on a holiday promising yourself you could go without the Internet, only to crumble and walk in a daze to the local Internet cafe to gorge on connectivity.

Everybody past a certain age, regardless of how they look on the outside, pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives.

Brain research tells us that only twenty percent of human beings have a sense of irony, which means that eighty percent of the world takes everything at face value.

Forget about being world famous, it's hard enough just getting the automatic doors at the supermarket to acknowledge our existence.

I decided at 40 I was wasting entire chunks of my brain and didn't want to blow my one chance on Earth. I'm glad I made that decision. Writing is largely about time, while visual art is largely about space. Sometimes, as with film, you can hybridize, but I think it's basically the space part of my brain wanting equal footing with the time part.

Your brain forms roughly 10,000 new cells every day, but unless they hook up to preexisting cells with strong memories, they die. Serves them right.

I'm a visual thinker. Research tells us that only 20 per cent of people think visually. So what about the other 80 per cent? Don't they think in pictures? I mean if you imagine washing and preparing potatoes you visualise the process, right?

Money isn't money anymore. Time doesn't feel like time anymore. Your sense of community, it's evaporated, too, or it's turned into something you visit at 2 A.M. on a website.

Try not thinking of peeling an orange. Try not imagining the juice running down your fingers, the soft inner part of the peel. The smell. Try and you can't. The brain doesn't process negatives.

Christmas makes everything twice as sad.

If God drives a car, He'd drive a 1973 Ford LTD Brougham sedan with a claret-colored vinyl roof, with oxblood leather upholstery and an opera window.

Sometimes failure isn't an opportunity in disguise, it's just you.

You pretend to be more eccentric than you actually are because you fear you are an interchangeable cog.

The thing about the end of the world is that not just the West collapses, the whole world does.

Good-looking people with strong, fluoridated teeth get things handed to them on platters.

Time perception is very much about how you sequence your activities, how many activities you layer overtop of others, and the types of gaps, if any, you leave in between activities.

Art was always my main focus; I fell into writing by accident in the 1980s, writing magazine articles to pay for my studio. I have to put myself into the position of writing; sometimes it doesn't work, and sometimes it works great.

Unhappiness is something we are never taught about; we are taught to expect happiness, but never a Plan B to use to use when the happiness doesn't arrive.

Most of us have only two or three genuinely interesting moments in our lives; the rest is filler.

If our subconscious was attractive, we wouldn't have to bury it down deep within us.

I miss the silliness of the Nineties. What would society be like if 9/11 never happened? If that silliness was extended forever?

Nature is one great big wood-chipper. Sooner or later, everything shoots out the other end in a spray of blood, bones and hair.

I like doing radio because it's so intimate. The moment people hear your voice, you're inside there heads, not only that, you're in there laying eggs.

Sometimes the best lighting of all is a power failure.

I always thought of words as art supplies.