• I wouldn’t manage to alter the course of things, that the mechanism of unhappiness was the strongest of all, that I would never regain Camille and that we would both die alone, unhappy and alone, each in our own way.

    Serotonin: A Novel
    Michel Houellebecq

  • So, yes, I could have lived alone with Camille, in that isolated house in the middle of the woods, and I would have seen the sun rise over the lake every morning, and I think that, in so far as such a thing had been granted to me, I could have been happy. But life, as they say, had decided otherwise.

    Serotonin: A Novel
    Michel Houellebecq

  • I could have made a woman happy. Well, two; I have said which ones. Everything was clear, extremely clear from the beginning, but we didn’t realise. Did we yield to the illusion of individual freedom, of an open life, of infinite possibilities? It’s possible; those ideas were part of the spirit of the age; we didn’t formalise them, we didn’t have the taste to do that; we merely conformed and allowed ourselves to be destroyed by them; and then, for a very long time, to suffer as a result.

    Serotonin: A Novel
    Michel Houellebecq

  • La messa è finita (1985)

  • He himself had never known any intimate relationship, of that I’m sure; his state of freedom was extreme.

    Whatever
    Michel Houellebecq

  • Similarly, the merciful man who performs his acts of charity by drawing on his possessions remains within the bounds of nature, and does not go beyond them as does the person who deliberately gives away all he possesses. Again, marriage is natural, while virginity is a more than natural grace.

    —St Peter of Damaskos

  • “Living together alone is hell between consenting adults.”

    The Possibility of an Island
    Michel Houellebecq

  • “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.”

    Platform
    Michel Houellebecq

  • “Olga was nice, Olga was nice and loving, Olga loved him, he repeated to himself with a growing sadness as he also realised that nothing would ever happen between them again, life sometimes offers you a chance he thought, but when you are too cowardly or too indecisive to seize it life takes the cards away; there is a moment for doing things and entering a possible happiness, and this moment lasts a few days, a few weeks or even a few months, but it only happens once and one time only, and if you want to return to it later it’s quite simply impossible. There’s no more place for enthusiasm, belief and faith, and there remains just gentle resignation, a sad and reciprocal pity, the useless but correct sensation that something could have happened, that you just simply showed yourself unworthy of this gift you had been offered.”

    The Map and the Territory 
    Michel Houellebecq

  • Paul: Do you really think that getting married is going to make it all better?

    Do you have any idea of how many married people – how many parents – feel as empty as you do?

    Let me ask you, when was the last time you felt real happiness?

    Mia: A couple weeks ago when I thought that I was pregnant.

    Paul: And what about that made you feel good? 

    Mia: That it wasn’t just me, that my life had meaning. That there would be this – this other person, always.

    Paul: Have you ever considered that maybe it’s not about a child, Mia, or a husband?

    Maybe that’s just a picture in your head from – from your family, from your friends, from—from the culture?

    Not everyone needs that to live a full and contented life.

    Maybe what you really want, Mia, is to feel connected – authentically connected – to somebody or something else.

    In Treatment
    S2, EP 31: Mia – Week Seven