Michel Houellebecq Quotes & Sayings

Father died last year. I don't subscribe to the theory by which we only become truly adult when our parents die; we never become truly adult. — Michel Houellebecq

Only literature can grant you access to a spirit from beyond the grave - a more direct, more complete, deeper access than you'd have in conversation with a friend. — Michel Houellebecq

Alice watched us with the affectionate, slightly mocking look that women get when they witness a conversation between men - that oddity, not quite buggery, or duel, but something in between. Above our heads the linden branches stirred in the breeze. Just then, in the distance, I heard a soft, muffled noise like an explosion. — Michel Houellebecq

Few beings have ever been so impregnated, pierced to the core, by the conviction of the absolute futility of human aspiration. The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles. A figure in transition toward chaos. That is what will finally prevail. The human race will disappear. Other races in turn will appear and disappear. The skies will be glacial and empty, traversed by the feeble light of half-dead stars. These too will disappear. Everything will disappear. And human actions are as free and as stripped of meaning as the unfettered movements of the elementary particles. Good, evil, morality, sentiments? Pure 'Victorian fictions.' All that exists is egotism. Cold, intact, and radiant. — Michel Houellebecq

I am persuaded that feminism is not at the root of political correctness. The actual source is much nastier and dares not speak its name, which is simply hatred for old people. The question of domination between men and women is relatively secondary - important but still secondary - compared to what I tried to capture in this novel, which is that we are now trapped in a world of kids. Old kids. The disappearance of patrimonial transmission means that an old guy today is just a useless ruin. The thing we value most of all is youth, which means that life automatically becomes depressing, because life consists, on the whole, of getting old. — Michel Houellebecq

But it remains the case that, on the level of consumption, the preeminence of the twentieth century was indisputable: nothing. — Michel Houellebecq

DURING THE FIRST PART of your life, you only become aware of happiness once you have lost it. Then an age comes, a second one, in which you already know, at the moment when you begin to experience true happiness, that you are, at the end of the day, going to lose it. — Michel Houellebecq

In that time he had managed to write books that made me consider him a friend more than a hundred years later. — Michel Houellebecq

The Americans are completely stupid. The intellectual level in any single European country is higher than in America. — Michel Houellebecq

An entire life spent reading would have fulfilled my every desire; I already knew that at the age of seven. The texture of the world is painful, inadequate; unalterable, or so it seems to me. Really, I believe that an entire life spent reading would have suited me best. Such a life has not been granted me ... — Michel Houellebecq

My novels are all ideas. — Michel Houellebecq

Men live alongside one another like cattle; it is a miracle if once in a while they manage to share a bottle of booze. — Michel Houellebecq

In any event people rarely see each other again
these days, even in cases where the relationship begins in an atmosphere of
enthusiasm. Sometimes breathless conversations take place, touching on the general
aspects of life; sometimes, too, a carnal embrace comes about. Sure, you exchange
telephone numbers but, generally speaking, you rarely call again. And even when
you do call and meet up, disillusionment and disenchantment rapidly take over from
the initial enthusiasm. Believe me, I know life; it's all perfectly cut and dried. — Michel Houellebecq

I want to be loved despite my faults. It isn't exactly true that I'm a provocateur. A real provocateur is someone who says things he doesn't think, just to shock. I try to say what I think. — Michel Houellebecq

It's perfectly possible to live without expecting anything of life; in fact, it's the most common way. — Michel Houellebecq

The physical bodies of young people, the only desirable possession the world has ever produced, were reserved for the exclusive use of the young, and the fate of the old was to work and to suffer. — Michel Houellebecq

I hadn't seen any novel make the statement that entering the workforce was like entering the grave. That from then on, nothing happens and you have to pretend to be interested in your work. And, furthermore, that some people have a sex life and others don't just because some are more attractive than others. I wanted to acknowledge that if people don't have a sex life, it's not for some moral reason, it's just because they're ugly. Once you've said it,
it sounds obvious, but I wanted to say it. — Michel Houellebecq

The mere will to live was clearly no match for the pains and aggravations that punctuate the life of the average Western man. — Michel Houellebecq

Historically, such human beings have existed. Human beings who have worked - worked hard - all their lives with no other motive than their love and devotion; who have literally given their lives for others, out of love and devotion. Human beings who have no sense of having made any sacrifice; who cannot imagine any other way of life than giving their lives for others - out of love and devotion. In general, such human beings are invariably women. — Michel Houellebecq

His masterpiece was a dead end - but isn't that true of any masterpiece? — Michel Houellebecq

If life is an illusion it's a pretty painful one. — Michel Houellebecq

Nevertheless, some free time remains. What's to be done? How do you use your time? In dedicating yourself to helping people? But basically other people don't interest you. Listening to records? That used to be a solution, but as the years go by you have to say that music moves you less and less. Taken in its widest sense, a spot of do-it-yourself can be a way out. But the fact is that nothing can halt the ever-increasing recurrence of those moments when your total isolation, the sensation of an all-consuming emptiness, the foreboding that your existence is nearing a painful and definitive end all combine to plunge you into a state of real suffering. And yet you haven't always wanted to die. You — Michel Houellebecq

I was lucky to meet you, yes.'
'Me too ... ' she said, looking me in the eyes. 'I was lucky too. The men I know are a disaster, not one of them believes in love; so they give you this big spiel about friendship, affection, a whole load of stuff that doesn't commit them to anything. I've got to the point where I can't stand the word 'friendship' any more, it makes me physically sick. Or there's the other lot, the ones who get married, who get hitched as early as possible and think about nothing but their careers afterwards. You obviously weren't one of those; but I also immediately sensed that you would never talk to me about friendship, that you would never be that vulgar. From the very beginning I hoped we would sleep together, that something important would happen; but it was possible that nothing would happen, in fact it was more than likely.' She stopped and sighed in irritation. — Michel Houellebecq

In my own writing, I think of myself as a realist who exaggerates a little. — Michel Houellebecq

To increase desires to an unbearable level whilst making the fulfillment of them more and more inaccessible: this was the single principle upon which Western society was based. — Michel Houellebecq

I prefer reading to writing. Reading changes your world view. Writing changes absolutely nothing. Except, of course, when it makes you rich. — Michel Houellebecq

Islam is a dangerous religion. — Michel Houellebecq

The past is always beautiful. So, for that matter, is the future. Only the present hurts, and we carry it around like an abscess of suffering, our compassion between two infinities of happiness and peace. — Michel Houellebecq

Should I just die? The decision struck me as premature. — Michel Houellebecq

When we think about the present, we veer wildly between the belief in chance and the evidence in favour of determinism. When we think about the past, however, it seems obvious that everything happened in the way that it was intended. — Michel Houellebecq

I think that if writers don't speak about real life, it's because they don't know it. — Michel Houellebecq

Women are not stupid, but they were not clever enough to realise that feminism did not bring freedom, but the opposite. That's why I'm glad feminism is dead. — Michel Houellebecq

Sexual pleasure was not only superior, in refinement and violence, to all the other pleasures life had to offer; it was not only the one pleasure with which there is no collateral damage to the organism, but which on the contrary contributes to maintaining it at its highest level of vitality and strength; it was in truth the sole pleasure, the sole objective of human existence, — Michel Houellebecq

Let's put a
chimpanzee in a tiny cage fronted by concrete bars. The animal would go berserk,
throw itself against the walls, rip out its hair, inflict cruel bites on itself, and in 73%
of cases will actually end up killing itself. Let's now make a breach in one of the
walls, which we will place next to a bottomless precipice. Our friendly sample
quadrumane will approach the edge, he'll look down, but remain at the edge for
ages, return there time and again, but generally he won't teeter over the brink; and
in all events his nervous state will be radically assuaged. — Michel Houellebecq

If you control the children, you control the future. — Michel Houellebecq

Nostalgia has nothing to do with aesthetics, it's not even connected to happy memories. We feel nostalgia for a place simply because we've lived there; whether we lived well or badly scarcely matters. — Michel Houellebecq

There is no point in asking me general questions because I am always changing my mind. — Michel Houellebecq

A reactionary is someone who wants to return to a previous state - that's never a possibility in my books. For me, everything's irreversible in the life of a society, as well as an individual's. — Michel Houellebecq

All in all, I was harking back to the Ancient Greeks. When you get old, you always hark back to the Ancient Greeks. — Michel Houellebecq

Hidden all day in impenetrable black burkas, rich Saudi women transformed themselves by night into birds of paradise with their corsets, their see-through bras, their G-strings with multicolored lace and rhinestones. They were exactly the opposite of Western women, who spent their days dressed up and looking sexy to maintain their social status, then collapsed in exhaustion once they got home, abandoning all hope of seduction in favor of clothes that were loose and shapeless. — Michel Houellebecq

Contemporary consciousness is no longer equipped to deal with our mortality. Never in any other time, or any other civilization, have people thought so much or so contantly about aging. Each individual has a simple view of the future: a time will come when the sum of pleasures that life has left to offer is outweighed by the sum of pain (one can actually feel the meter ticking, and it ticks always in the same direction). This weighing up of pleasure and pain, which everyone is forced to make sooner or later, leads logically, at a certain age, to suicide. — Michel Houellebecq

In revolutionary times, those who accord themselves, with an extraordinary arrogance, the facile credit for having inflamed anarchy in their contemporaries fail to recognize that what appears to be a sad triumph is in fact due to a spontaneous disposition, determined by the social situation as a whole. - AUGUSTE COMTE, — Michel Houellebecq

Even in our deepest, most lasting friendships, we never speak as openly as when we face a blank page and address a reader we do not know. — Michel Houellebecq

It is interesting to note that the "sexual revolution" was sometimes portrayed as a communal utopia, whereas in fact it was simply another stage in the historical rise of individualism. As the lovely word "household" suggests, the couple and the family would be the last bastion of primitive communism in liberal society. The sexual revolution was to destroy these intermediary communities, the last to separate the individual from the market. The destruction continues to this day. — Michel Houellebecq

To refuse to do something because you've already done it, because you've already been there, rapidly leads to the destruction, for yourself as much as for others, of any reason for living, for any possible future, and it plunges you into an oppressive ennui that will eventually transform into atrocious bitterness, accompanied by hatred and rancor toward those who still belong to the land of the living. — Michel Houellebecq

On Sunday morning I went out for a while in the neighbourhood; I bought some
raisin bread. The day was warm but a little sad, as Sundays often are in Paris,
especially when one doesn't believe in God. — Michel Houellebecq

In any case, it wouldn't affect the results at all, but that phrase the balance of power always sounds impressive in conversation, as if you'd been reading Clausewitz and Sun Tzu. I — Michel Houellebecq

In these countries today no one believed in God anymore, or took account of him, or even remembered that they had once believed; and this had been achieved without difficulty, without conflict, without any kind of violence or protest, without even a real discussion, as easily as a heavy object, held back for some time by an external obstacle, returns as soon as you release it, to its position of equilibrium. Human spiritual beliefs were perhaps far from being the massive, solid irrefutable block we usually imagined; on the contrary, perhaps they were what was most fleeting and fragile in man, the thing most ready to be born and to die. — Michel Houellebecq

I've lived so little that I tend to imagine I'm not going to die; it seems improbable
that human existence can be reduced to so little; one imagines, in spite of oneself,
that sooner or later something is bound to happen. A big mistake. A life can just as
well be both empty and short. The days slip by indifferently, leaving neither trace nor
memory; and then all of a sudden they stop. — Michel Houellebecq

It must have taken her a while to get ready before dropping the kids off at day care, then she spent the day e-mailing, on the phone, in various meetings, and once she got home, around nine, exhausted (Bruno was the one who picked the kids up, who made them dinner - he had the hours of a civil servant), she'd collapse, get into a sweatshirt and yoga pants, and that's how she'd greet her lord and master, and some part of him must have known - had to have known - that he was fucked, and some part of her must have known that she was fucked, and that things wouldn't get better over the years. The children would get bigger, the demands at work would increase, as if automatically, not to mention the sagging of the flesh. — Michel Houellebecq

Literature has always carried positive connotations in the world of luxury goods. — Michel Houellebecq

In order to pass the time I told him the story of the German who ate the other German whom he'd met on the internet. — Michel Houellebecq

Much, maybe too much, has been written about literature. — Michel Houellebecq

The great advantage of a novel is you can put in whatever comes into your head - it has the same shape as the human brain. — Michel Houellebecq

No subject is more touched on than love, in the human life stories as well as in the literary corpus they have left us ... No subject, either, is as discussed, as controversial, especially during the final period of human history, when the cyclothymic fluctuations concerning the belief in love became constant and dizzying. In conclusion, no subject seems to have preoccupied man as much; even money, even the satisfaction derived from combat and glory, loses by comparison, its dramatic power in human life stories. Love seems to have been, for humans of the final period, the acme and the impossible, the regret and the grace, the focal point upon which all suffering and joy could be concentrated. — Michel Houellebecq

When men have no vices, she thought, it's very difficult to guess what might make them happy. — Michel Houellebecq

The dream of all men is to meet little sluts who are innocent but ready for all forms of depravity - which is what, more or less, all teenage girls are. — Michel Houellebecq

Thirty years later, Bruno was convinced that, taken in context, the episode could be summed up in one sentence: Caroline Yessayan's miniskirt was to blame for everything. — Michel Houellebecq

In the presence of a reader of Teilhard De Chardin I feel disarmed, nonplussed, ready to break down in tears. — Michel Houellebecq

Love binds, and it binds forever. Good binds while evil unravels. Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit. — Michel Houellebecq

The most stupid religion is Islam. — Michel Houellebecq

You have to take an interest in something in life, I told myself. I wondered what could interest me, after I was finished with love. I could take a course in wine tasting, maybe , or start collecting model aeroplanes — Michel Houellebecq

This progressive effacement of human relationships is not without certain problems for the novel. How, in point of fact, would one handle the narration of those unbridled passions, stretching over many years, and at times making their effect felt on several generations? We're a long way from Wuthering Heights, to say the least. The novel form is not conceived for depicting indifference or nothingness; a flatter, more terse, and dreary discourse would need to be invented. — Michel Houellebecq

I maintained a tactical silence. When you maintain a tactical silence and look people right in the eye, as if drinking in their words, they talk. People like to be listened to, as every researcher knows
every researcher, every writer, every spy. — Michel Houellebecq

The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us therefore cast off the works of darkness, and let us put on the armour of light. — Michel Houellebecq

Two years before, when the riots started, the media had had a field day, but now people discussed them less and less ... in fact the media's attitude had changed over the last few months. No one talked about violence in the banlieues or race riots anymore. That was all passed over in silence. — Michel Houellebecq

She had graduated from the Beaux Arts in Caen. She worked entirely on her body, she explained to me; I looked at her anxiously as she opened her portfolio. I was hoping she wasn't going to show me photos of plastic surgery on her toes or anything like that - I'd had it up to here with things like that. But no, she simply handed me some postcards which she had had made, with the imprint of her pussy dipped in different coloured paints. I chose a turquoise and a mauve; I was a little sorry I hadn't brought photos of my prick to return the favour. — Michel Houellebecq

The putting to death of morality had, on the whole, become a sort of ritual sacrifice necessary for the reassertion of the dominant values of the group - centered for some decades now on competition, innovation, and energy, more than on fidelity and duty. — Michel Houellebecq

To give a man 5 sous because he is poor and has no bread is perfect, but to give him a blowjob because he has no girlfriend is too much of a good thing: you don't have to do that. — Michel Houellebecq

It's true this world our breathing laboured
inspires nothing more than obvious disgust
a desire to flee without our share
and no longer read the headlines
we long to return to our ancestral home
where our forebears once lived under an angel's wing
we long to find that strange morality
which sanctified life to the end
we crave something like loyalty
like the embrace of mild addictions
something that transcends yet contains life
we cannot live far from eternity — Michel Houellebecq

Jesus had loved men too much, that was the problem; to let himself be crucified for their sake showed, at the very least, a lack of taste, as the old faggot would have put it. — Michel Houellebecq

In societies like ours sex truly represents a second system of differentiation, completely independent of money; and as a system of differentiation it functions mercilessly. The effects of these two systems are, furthermore, strictly equivalent. Just like unrestrained economic liberalism produces phenomena of absolute pauperization. Some men make love every day; others five of six times in their life, or never. Some make love with dozens of women; others with none. It's what's known as 'the law of the market. — Michel Houellebecq

The triumph of vegetation is total. — Michel Houellebecq

Not having anything around to read is dangerous: you have to content yourself with life itself, and that can lead you to take risks. — Michel Houellebecq

All I knew was that once again I found myself alone, with even less desire to live and nothing to look forward to but aggravations. — Michel Houellebecq

Jean-Yves looked up at his mother's face, her greying chignon, her harsh features: it was difficult to feel a rush of tenderness, of affection for this woman; as far back as he could remember, she had never really been one for hugs; it was equally difficult to imagine her in the role of a sensual lover, a slut. He suddenly realised that his father must have been bored shitless his whole life. He felt terribly shocked by this, his hands tensed on the edge of the table: this time it was irreparable, it was definitive. In despair, he tried to recall a moment when he had seen his father beaming, happy, genuinely glad to be alive. — Michel Houellebecq

I think that if I am notorious, it is because other people have decided that this is how I should be. — Michel Houellebecq

Depressive lucidity, usually described as a radical withdrawal from ordinary human concerns, generally manifests itself by a profound indifference to things which are genuinely of minor interest. Thus it is possible to imagine a depressed lover, while the idea of a depressed patriot seems frankly inconceivable. — Michel Houellebecq

The love of a dog is a pure thing. He gives you a trust which is total. You must not betray it. — Michel Houellebecq

Undoubtedly, the best way for a consumer to have a good time in the 2010s was to turn to Korean products: for a car, Kia and Hyundai; for electronics, LG and Samsung. — Michel Houellebecq

The map is more interesting than the territory. — Michel Houellebecq

Some people live to be seventy, sometimes eighty years old believing there is always something new just around the corner, as they say; in the end they practically have to be killed or at least reduced to a state of serious incapacity to get them to see reason. — Michel Houellebecq

As soon as the genome had been cmpletely decoded (which would be in a matter of months) humanity would have complete control of its evolution; when that happened sexuality would be seen for what it really was: a useless, dangerous, and regressive function. — Michel Houellebecq

I was myself drawn along a path that was just as hypothetical, but it had become a matter of indifference to me whether or not I reached my destination: basically, what I wanted to do was to continue to travel with Fox across the prairies and mountains, to experience the awakenings, the baths in a freezing river, the minutes spent drying in the sun, the evenings spent around the fire in the starlight. I had attained innocence, in an absolute and nonconflictual state, I no longer had any plan, nor any objective, and my individuality dissolved into an indefinite series of days; I was happy. — Michel Houellebecq

Youth, beauty, strenght: the criteria for physical lova are exactly the same as those of Nazism. — Michel Houellebecq

So you're for a return to patriarchy?" "You know I'm not for anything, but at least patriarchy existed. I mean, as a social system it was able to perpetuate itself. There were families with children, and most of them had children. In other words, it worked, whereas now there aren't enough children, so we're finished. — Michel Houellebecq

The academic study of literature leads basically nowhere, as we all know, — Michel Houellebecq

Using a big word like 'plagiarism' ... always causes some damage. It will always do lasting damage, like accusations of racism. — Michel Houellebecq

It will all be much easier for the conservatives, who are in even worse shape, and who never cared about education - they hardly even know what education is. — Michel Houellebecq

That if a civil war should break out in France, it would take a while to reach the south-west. I knew next to nothing about the south-west, really, only that it was a region where they ate duck confit, and duck confit struck me as incompatible with civil war. — Michel Houellebecq

(liberal individualism triumphed as long as it undermined intermediate structures such as nations, corporations, castes, but when it attacked that ultimate social structure, the family, and thus the birthrate, it signed its own death warrant; Muslim dominance was a foregone conclusion). — Michel Houellebecq

The intellectual summits of my life had been completing my dissertation and publishing my book, and that was already more than ten years ago. Intellectual summits? Summits, full stop. In those days, at least, I'd felt justified. Since then I hadn't produced anything except a few short articles for the Journal of Nineteenth-Century Studies, plus a couple for The Literary Review, when some new book touched on my field of expertise. My articles were clear, incisive and brilliant. They were generally well received, especially since I never missed a deadline. But was that enough to justify a life? — Michel Houellebecq

In all of human history there may never have been a mind as brilliant as Isaac Newton's - just think what an amazing, unheard-of intellectual effort it took to discover a single law that accounted for the fall of earthly bodies and the movement of the planets! Well, Newton believed in God. — Michel Houellebecq

Unhappiness isn't at its most acute point until a realistic chance of happiness, sufficiently close, has been envisioned. — Michel Houellebecq

I don't like this world. I definitely do not like it. The society in which I live disgusts
me; advertising sickens me; computers make me puke. — Michel Houellebecq

Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don't care to know any more. — Michel Houellebecq

That old queer Nietzsche had it right: Christianity was, at the end of the day, a feminine religion. — Michel Houellebecq

I didn't even want to fuck her, or maybe I kind of wanted to fuck her but I also kind of wanted to die, I couldn't really tell. — Michel Houellebecq

To love a book is, above all, to love its author: we want to meet him again, we want to spend our days with him. — Michel Houellebecq

The truth is that men were simply giving up the ghost. — Michel Houellebecq