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

Michel Houellebecq

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Michel Houellebecq
Age: 66
Born: 1958
Born: February 26
Actor
Author
Essayist
Film Director
Novelist
Poet
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Songwriter
Writer
World
Jean
People
Profoundly
Active
Less
History
Change
Rousseau
Ideas
Jacques
Important
Napoleon

More quotes by Michel Houellebecq

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In my own writing, I think of myself as a realist who exaggerates a little.
Michel Houellebecq
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The press may hate me, and I know my battles with them are not over, but that doesn't matter.
Michel Houellebecq
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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
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Why am I popular? I don't know. Is it a mistake? I should think it's a mistake somewhere.
Michel Houellebecq
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The triumph of vegetation is total.
Michel Houellebecq
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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
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Using a big word like 'plagiarism'... always causes some damage. It will always do lasting damage, like accusations of racism.
Michel Houellebecq
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The most stupid religion is Islam.
Michel Houellebecq
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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
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The Americans are completely stupid. The intellectual level in any single European country is higher than in America.
Michel Houellebecq
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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.
Michel Houellebecq
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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
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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
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Islam is a dangerous religion.
Michel Houellebecq
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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
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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
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I think that if writers don't speak about real life, it's because they don't know it.
Michel Houellebecq
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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
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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
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Anything can happen in life, especially nothing.
Michel Houellebecq