• Ultimately, love resolves all problems.

    Michel Houellebecq’s manifesto: Rester vivant (To Stay Alive)

  • Your unceasing working over of your obsessions will end up transforming you into a pathetic wreck, consumed by anguish and devastated by apathy.

    Michel Houellebecq’s manifesto: Rester vivant (To Stay Alive)

  • That said, survival is extremely difficult. One could consider adopting what could be called Pessoa’s strategy: find a little job, publish nothing, and await death peacefully. In practice, one would be going forward to meet significant difficulties: the feeling that one is wasting one’s time, that one is not in one’s place, that one is not being esteemed at one’s true value. . . All this would rapidly become unbearable.

    Michel Houellebecq’s manifesto: Rester vivant (To Stay Alive)

  • Develop in yourself a profound resentment toward life. This resentment is necessary for any veritable artistic creation.

    Michel Houellebecq’s manifesto: Rester vivant (To Stay Alive)

  • I left after breakfast the next day, under a brilliant Sunday sun, which contrasted with my growing sadness.

    Serotonin: A Novel
    Michel Houellebecq

  • I came into contact (the receptionist at the Hôtel Mercure, the waiters at the café O’Jules, the girl on the till at Carrefour City) had asked about my mood, I would have been inclined to call it ‘sad’, but it was a peaceful, stable sadness, not susceptible to increase or decrease; a sadness, in short, that to all intents and purposes appeared definitive. But I wasn’t falling into that trap; I knew that life might still have plenty of surprises, either atrocious or delightful, in store for me.

    Serotonin: A Novel
    Michel Houellebecq

  • Aymeric had married within his circle, that’s what happens most often in the end, and it’s what gives the best results in principle, well, that’s what I’d heard anyway, but my problem is that I had no circle, no precise circle.

    Serotonin: A Novel
    Michel Houellebecq

  • I dreamt that Camille had been welcomed at my parents’ house in Senlis and I nearly talked to her about it when I woke up, but then I remembered that they were dead–I’ve always had difficulties with death, it’s a characteristic trait of mine.

    Serotonin: A Novel
    Michel Houellebecq

  • I hope I have explained clearly enough that I have never had what is called a strong personality; I wasn’t one of those people who leave indelible traces in history, or even in the memories of their contemporaries.

    Serotonin: A Novel
    Michel Houellebecq

  • But there is also a very high level of cortisol–the quantities of cortisol that you’re secreting are incredible. In fact … can I speak frankly?’ I said he could, that had been more or less the tone of our exchanges until now–frankness. ‘Well, in fact…’ He hesitated even so, his lips trembled slightly before he said: ‘I have the sense that you are, very simply, dying of sorrow.’ ‘Is there such a thing as dying of sorrow; does that mean anything?’ was the only answer that came to mind.

    Serotonin: A Novel
    Michel Houellebecq