01UndatedContemporary 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 / quote ↗
02UndatedLove 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 / quote ↗
03UndatedFor myself, I wouldn't have lifted a finger to own a Rolex, a pair of Nikes or a BMW Z3; in fact, I had never succeeded in identifying the slightest difference between designer goods and non-designer goods. In the eyes of the world, I was clearly wrong. I was aware of this: I was in a minority, and consequently in the wrong. There had to be a difference between Yves Saint-Laurent shirts and other shirts, between Gucci moccasins and Andre moccasins. I was alone in not perceiving this difference; it was an infirmity which I could not cite as grounds for condemning the world. Does one ask a blind man to set himself up as an expert on post-impressionist painting? Through my blindness, however involuntary, I set myself apart from a living human reality powerful enough to incite both devotion and crime. These youths, through their half-savage instincts, undoubtedly discerned the presence of beauty; their desire was laudable, and perfectly in keeping with social norms; it was merely a question of rectifying the inappropriate way in which it was expressed.Michel Houellebecq / quote ↗
04UndatedI 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 / quote ↗
05UndatedA woman is human, obviously, but she represents a slightly different kind of humanity.Michel Houellebecq / quote ↗
06UndatedTo 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 / quote ↗
08UndatedThe 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 / quote ↗
09UndatedPeople like to be listened to, as every researcher knows – every researcher, every writer, every spy.Michel Houellebecq / quote ↗
10UndatedTwo 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 / quote ↗
11UndatedThe Enlightened One, if he had meditated on it, would not necessarily have rejected a technical solution.Michel Houellebecq / quote ↗
12UndatedI think she is going to find you too old... Yes that was it, the moment she said it I knew it was true, and the revelation caused me no surprise, it was like the echo of a dull, not unexpected shock. The age difference was the last taboo, the final limit, all the stronger for the fact that it remained the last and had replaced all the others. In the modern world you could be a swinger, bi, trans, zoo into S&M, but it was forbidden to be old.Michel Houellebecq / quote ↗
13UndatedI 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 / quote ↗
14UndatedHe was a kind of éminence grise, a political leader, in a clandestine movement. Everyone knows there are girls who go for that kind of thing. There are girls who go for Huysmanists, for that matter. I once met a girl -- a pretty, attractive girl -- who told me she fantasized about Jean-François Copé. It took me several days to get over it. Really, with girls today, all bets are off.Michel Houellebecq / quote ↗
15UndatedThey were really willing to pay to avoid any trouble. No doubt they had overestimated the ability of academics to make a nuisance of themselves. It had been years since an academic title gained you access to major media.... Even if all the university professors in France had risen up in protest, almost nobody would have noticed, but apparently they hadn't found that out in Saudi Arabia. They still believed, deep down, in the power of the intellectual elite. It was almost touching.Michel Houellebecq / quote ↗
17UndatedYour only chance of survival, if you are severely smitten, lies in hiding this fact from the woman you love, of feigning a casual detachment under all circumstances. What sadness there is in this simple observation! What an accusation against man! Love makes you weak, and the weaker of the two is oppressed, tortured, and finally killed by the other, who in his or her turn oppresses, tortures, and kills without having evil intentions, without even getting pleasure from it, with complete indifference; that's what men, normally, call love.Michel Houellebecq / quote ↗
18UndatedRumor had it that he was homosexual; in reality, in recent years, he was simply a garden-variety alcoholic.Michel Houellebecq / quote ↗
19UndatedThe 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 / quote ↗
20Undated...intimacy isn't something men talk about. They may talk about politics, literature, stocks, or sports, depending on the man, but about their love lives they keep silent, even to their dying breath.Michel Houellebecq / quote ↗
22UndatedAn 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.Michel Houellebecq / quote ↗
23UndatedWhat about you, Michel, what are you going to do here?'The response closest to the truth was probably something like 'Nothing'; but it's always difficult to explain that kind of thing to an active person.Michel Houellebecq / quote ↗
24UndatedYou can't be a crazy rebel in the face of death, it's not a fitting attitude.Michel Houellebecq / quote ↗
