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.

Coupland’s line distills a recurring theme in his fiction and essays: the quiet, pervasive dissatisfaction that can settle in after youth’s sense of open possibility narrows into routines, obligations, and fixed identities. By stressing “regardless of how they look on the outside,” he points to the mismatch between public presentation (success, stability, attractiveness) and private longing. The “dream” of escape is not necessarily a plan to abandon one’s life, but a persistent fantasy of alternative selves and unchosen paths—an emotional pressure valve for modern adulthood. The quote also implies a generational, late-capitalist fatigue: even comfortable lives can feel inescapable when meaning and agency seem constrained.