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The Great Gatsby
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The Great Gatsby
Hamlet

Michel Houellebecq Quotes

Those who think they know me are simply lacking in information.

– Michel Houellebecq

Islam is a dangerous religion.

– Michel Houellebecq

I think that there is a sharp contrast for most people between life at university, where they meet lots of people, and the moment when they enter the workforce, when they basically no longer meet anyone. Life becomes dull. So as a result people get married to have a personal life. I could elaborate but I think everyone understands.

– Michel Houellebecq

When a country is strong… it accepts any dose of pessimism from its writers.

– 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

Active people don’t change the world profoundly; ideas do. Napoleon is less important in world history than Jean-Jacques Rousseau.

– Michel Houellebecq

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.

– 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

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

– Michel Houellebecq

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

– Michel Houellebecq

I admit that invective is one of my pleasures. This only brings me problems in life, but that’s it. I attack, I insult. I have a gift for that, for insults, for provocation. So I am tempted to use it.

– Michel Houellebecq

I’d say that the question whether love still exists plays the same role in my novels as the question of God’s existence in Dostoevsky.

– Michel Houellebecq

I tend to think that good and evil exist and that the quantity in each of us is unchangeable. The moral character of people is set, fixed until death.

– Michel Houellebecq

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

– Michel Houellebecq

The most stupid religion is Islam.

– Michel Houellebecq

The press may hate me, and I know my battles with them are not over, but that doesn’t matter.

– 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

You can’t be a crazy rebel in the face of death, it’s not a fitting attitude.

– Michel Houellebecq

You know, you don’t have to have permanent opinions. You can think, every morning, ‘I love the world’ and go to bed every night thinking, ‘I hate the world.’

– 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

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

– Michel Houellebecq

My novels are all ideas.

– Michel Houellebecq

Using a big word like ‘plagiarism’… always causes some damage. It will always do lasting damage, like accusations of racism.

– 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

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

– Michel Houellebecq

I think poetry is the only domain where a writer you like can truly be said to influence you, because you read and reread a poem so many times that it simply drills itself into your head.

– Michel Houellebecq