Michel Houellebecq Quotes

17 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
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
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
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
Adolescence is not only an important period in life, but that it is the only period where one may speak of life in the full sense of the word.

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 world outside had its own rules, and those rules were not human.

Michel Houellebecq
You get used to terrorist attacks. France will hold on. The French will hold on, without even needing a sursaut national, a national pushback reflex. They'll hold on because there's no other way, and because you get used to everything. No human force, not even fear, is stronger than habit.

Michel Houellebecq
Rumor had it that he was homosexual; in reality, in recent years, he was simply a garden-variety alcoholic.

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

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
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
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
Tenderness is a deeper instinct than seduction, which is why it is so hard to give up hope.

Michel Houellebecq