Michel Houellebecq
Michel Houellebecq
Michel Houellebecqis a French author, filmmaker, and poet. Having written poetry and a biographical essay on the horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, he published his first novel, Whatever, in 1994. Atomised followed in 1998, and Platform in 2001. He published a book of poems, The Art of Struggle, in 1996. After a publicity tour for Platform led to his being taken to court for inciting racial hatred, he moved to Ireland to write for several years. He currently resides in...
NationalityFrench
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth26 February 1956
CountryFrance
Active people don't change the world profoundly; ideas do. Napoleon is less important in world history than Jean-Jacques Rousseau.
The Americans are completely stupid. The intellectual level in any single European country is higher than in America.
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.
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.
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.
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.
The love of a dog is a pure thing. He gives you a trust which is total. You must not betray it.
It's a curious idea to reproduce when you don't even like life.
I am for the muscles. I would like to have a lot of muscles, because women like it. I'm for bodybuilding, but it's very exhausting.
Love binds, and it binds forever. Good binds while evil unravels. Separation is another word for evil; it is also another word for deceit.
Not having anything around to read is dangerous: you have to content yourself with life itself, and that can lead you to take risks.
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.
...beds last on an average much longer than marriages...
If life is an illusion it's a pretty painful one.