Houellebecq Quotes & Sayings

You're what," I asked, "Catholic? Fascist? Both?" It just popped out. I was out of practice with intellectuals of the right - I couldn't remember how to behave. All at once, in the distance, we heard a kind of sustained crackling. "What was that, do you think?" asked Alice. "It sounded like shooting," she added, hesitantly. We fell silent, — 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

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

Life begins at fifty, that's true, inasmuch as it ends at forty. — Michel Houellebecq

Were they ready to give up everything for their country? I felt ready to give up everything, not really for my country, but in general. — 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

Anything can happen in life, especially nothing. — Michel Houellebecq

Western nations took a strange pride in this system, though it amounted to little more than a power-sharing deal between two rival gangs, and they would even go to war to impose it on nations that failed to share their enthusiasm. Over — 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

On beach holidays, as perhaps in life more generally, the only truly enjoyable time of the day is breakfast. — Michel Houellebecq

The French Revolution, the republic, the motherland ... yes, all that paved the way for something, something that lasted a little more than a century. The Christian Middle Ages lasted a millennium and more. — Michel Houellebecq

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

Bloy was the ultimate weapon against the twentieth century, its mediocrity, its moronic 'engagement,' its cloying humanitarianism; against Sartre, and Camus, and all their political playacting; and against all those sickening formalists, the nouveau roman, the pointless absurdity of it all. — Michel Houellebecq

I think it's more difficult to live without a religion, definitely. — 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

What could we do, then? We asked ourselves the question while crossing the dunes. Live? It's precisely in this kind of situation that, crushed by the sense of their own insignificance, people decide to have children; this is how the species reproduces, although less and less, it must be said. — Michel Houellebecq

Islam is a dangerous religion. — 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

A cockroach appeared just as I was about to get into the bath. It was just the right time for a cockroach to make an appearance in my life; couldn't have been better. It scuttled quickly across the porcelain, the little bugger; I looked around for a slipper, but actually I knew my chances of squashing him were small. What was the point in trying? And what good was Oon, in spite of her marvellously elastic vagina? We were already doomed. Cockroaches copulate gracelessly, with no apparent pleasure; but they also do it repeatedly and their genetic mutations are rapid and efficient. There is absolutely nothing we can do about cockroaches. — Michel Houellebecq

The Enlightened One, if he had meditated on it, would not necessarily have rejected a technical solution. — 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

Of course, we can distinguish between males and females; we can also, if we choose, distinguish between different age categories; but any more advanced distinction comes close to pedantry, probably a result of boredom. A creature that is bored elaborates distinctions and hierarchies. According to Hutchinson and Rawlins, the development of systems of hierarchical dominance within animal societies does not correspond to any practical necessity, nor to any selective advantage; it simply constitutes a means of combating the crushing boredom of life in the heart of nature. — Michel Houellebecq

These immigrants held out the hope of a new golden age for the old continent. — Michel Houellebecq

Why am I popular? I don't know. Is it a mistake? I should think it's a mistake somewhere. — 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

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

It's a curious idea to reproduce when you don't even like life. — Michel Houellebecq

You know the magazine I work for: all we're trying to do is create an artificial mankind, a frivolous one that will no longer be open to seriousness or to humor, which, until it dies, will engage in an increasingly desperate quest for fun and sex; a generation of definitive kids. We are going to succeed, of course; and, in that world, you will no longer have your place. — Michel Houellebecq

People cannot live without God; life becomes unbearable. — Michel Houellebecq

Ah, Houellebecq. I've only read him in English translations so I'm sure I'm not getting the full greatness of his work, but golly, he writes better sex scenes than anyone else alive. — Chuck Palahniuk

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

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

Maybe I should have gone into politics. If you were a political activist, election season brought moments of intensity, whichever side you were on, and meanwhile here I was inarguably withering away, — Michel Houellebecq

The transition to a salaried workforce had doomed the nuclear family and led to the complete atomization of society, — Michel Houellebecq

The greater the proportion of pure morality in a particular system, the happier and more enduring the society. — Michel Houellebecq

Irony won't save you from anything; humour doesn't do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn't matter how brave you are, or how reserved, or how much you've developed a sense of humour, you still end up with your heart broken. That's when you stop laughing. — Michel Houellebecq

Polemical debates happen all the time in France. — Michel Houellebecq

Later Michel went up to the priest as he was packing away the tools of the trade. "I was very interested in what you were saying earlier ... " The man of God smiled urbanely, then Michel began to talk about the Aspect experiments and the EPR paradox: how two particle, once united, are forever and inseparable whole, "which seems pretty much in keeping with what you were saying about one flesh." The priest's smile froze slightly. "What I'm trying to say, "Michel went on enthusiastically, "is that from an ontological point of view, the pair can be assigned a single vector in Hilbert space. Do you see what I mean? — 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

In the end, my cock was all I had. — Michel Houellebecq

We are probably wrong to suspect that each individual has some secret passion, some mystery, some weakness; if Jean-Yves's father had had to express his innermost convictions, the profound meaning he ascribed to life, he could probably have cited nothing more than a slight disappointment. — Michel Houellebecq

The feeling of closeness when we talked on the phone was too violent, and the void that came afterward too cruel. — Michel Houellebecq

A woman is human, obviously, but she represents a slightly different kind of humanity. — Michel Houellebecq

Writing brings scant relief. It retraces, it delimits. It lends a touch of coherence, the idea of a kind of realism. One stumbles around in a cruel fog, but there is the odd pointer. Chaos is no more than a few feet away. A meagre victory, in truth. — 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

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

And I no longer even know where the source is; at present, everything looks the same. The landscape is more and more gentle, amiable, joyous; my skin hurts. I am at the heart of the abyss. I feel my skin again as a frontier, and the external world as a crushing weight. The impression of separation is total; from now on I am imprisoned within myself. It will not take place, the sublime fusion; the goal of life is missed. It is two in the afternoon. — 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

People are suspicious of single men on vacation, after they get to a certain age: they assume that they're selfish, and probably a bit pervy. I can't say they're wrong. — Michel Houellebecq

I feel as if things are falling apart within me,
like so many glass partitions shattering. I walk from place to place in the grip of a
fury, needing to act, yet can do nothing about it because any attempt seems doomed
in advance. Failure, everywhere failure. Only suicide hovers above me, gleaming and
inaccessible. — Michel Houellebecq

be fair, when I was young, the elections could not have been less interesting; the mediocrity of the 'political offerings' was almost surprising. A centre-left candidate would be elected, serve either one or two terms, depending how charismatic he was, then for obscure reasons he would fail to complete a third. When people got tired of that candidate, and the centre-left in general, we'd witness the phenomenon of democratic change, and the voters would install a candidate of the centre-right, also for one or two terms, depending on his personal appeal. Western nations took a strange pride in this system, though it amounted to little more than a power-sharing deal between two rival gangs, and they would even go to war to impose it on nations that failed to share their enthusiasm. — Michel Houellebecq

The beach at Meschers was crawling with wankers in shorts and bimbos in thongs. It was reassuring. — Michel Houellebecq

Living together aklone is hell between consenting adults. — Michel Houellebecq

It was amazing, even, to think that the only thing left to people in their despair was reading. — Michel Houellebecq

But only literature can put you in touch with another human spirit, as a whole, with all its weaknesses and grandeurs, its limitations, its pettinesses, its obsessions, its beliefs; with whatever it finds moving, interesting, exciting, or repugnant. 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. Even — 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

There is no endless silence of infinite space, for in reality there is no space, no silence and no void. — Michel Houellebecq

It wasn't easy to cram your whole life into thirty kilos of luggage. — Michel Houellebecq

they argue that belief in a transcendent being conveys a genetic advantage: that couples who follow one of the three religions of the Book and maintain patriarchal values have more children than atheists or agnostics. You see less education among women, less hedonism and individualism. And to a large degree, this belief in transcendence can be passed on genetically. Conversions, or cases where people grow up to reject family values, are statistically insignificant. In the vast majority of cases, people stick with whatever metaphysical system they grow up in. That's why atheist humanism - the basis of any 'pluralist society' - is doomed. — 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

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

Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world. — Michel Houellebecq

As a teenager, Michel believed that suffering conferred dignity on a person. Now he had to admit that he had been wrong. What conferred dignity on people was television. — 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 tables were taken by law students talking about rave parties or 'junior associates', in other words, those things which interest law students — Michel Houellebecq

Now abideth beauty, truth, and intensity; but the greatest of these is intensity. — Michel Houellebecq

The world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human. — Michel Houellebecq

The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die. — 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

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

The only conclusion he could draw was that without points of reference, a man melts away. — 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

Had probably never had a real conversation with anyone other than a woman I loved, and essentially it seemed unsurprising to me that the exchange of ideas with someone who doesn't know your body, is not in a position to secure its unhappiness or on the other hand to bring it joy, was a false and ultimately impossible exercise, for we are bodies, we are, above all, principally and almost uniquely bodies, and the state of our bodies constitutes the true explanation of the majority of our intellectual and moral conceptions. — 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

The sun shone on the meadows and woods like a trusted employee. — Michel Houellebecq

My life, my life, my very old one
My first badly healed desire,
My first crippled love,
You had to return.
It was necessary to know
What is best in our lives,
When two bodies play at happiness,
Unite, reborn without end.
Entered into complete dependency,
I know the trembling of being,
The hesitation to disappear,
Sunlight upon the forest's edge
And love, where all is easy,
Where all is given in the instant;
There exists in the midst of time
The possibility of an island. — 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

The terrible predicament of a beautiful girl is that only an experienced womanizer, someone cynical and without scruple, feels up to the challenge. More often than not, she will lose her virginity to some filthy lowlife in what proves to be the first step in an irrevocable decline. — Michel Houellebecq

The most stupid religion is Islam. — 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

For men, love is nothing more than gratitude for the gift of pleasure, — 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

Or maybe I was just hungry. I'd forgotten to eat the day before, and possibly what I should do was go back to my hotel and sit down to a few duck's legs instead of falling down between the pews in an attack of mystical hypoglycemia. — Michel Houellebecq

The story of a life can be as long or as short as the teller wishes. Whether the life is tragic or enlightened, the classic gravestone inscription marking simply the dates of birth and death has, in its brevity, much to recommend it. — Michel Houellebecq

I find it an absolute pleasure to read travel guides, especially the Michelin guides, and their description of places I know I'll probably never visit. I spend a large part of my life reading descriptions of restaurants. — 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

If they can read in the eyes of a man an energy, a passion, then they find him attractive. — Michel Houellebecq

What's amazing about Bayrou, what makes him irreplaceable," Tanneur enthused, "is that he's an utter moron. — Michel Houellebecq