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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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The Americans Are Completely

Michel Houellebecq

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The Americans Are Completely Stupid. The Intellectual Level In Any Single European Country Is Higher Than In America.

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I Want To Be Loved Despite My Faults. It Isn't Exactly True That I'm A Provocateur. A Real Provocateur Is Someone Who Says Things He Doesn't Think, Just To Shock. I Try To Say What I Think.

This Progressive Effacement Of Human Relationships Is Not Without Certain Problems For The Novel. How, In Point Of Fact, Would One Handle The Narration Of Those Unbridled Passions, Stretching Over Many Years, And At Times Making Their Effect Felt On Several Generations? We’re A Long Way From Wuthering Heights, To Say The Least. The Novel Form Is Not Conceived For Depicting Indifference Or Nothingness; A Flatter, More Terse, And Dreary Discourse Would Need To Be Invented.

Father Died Last Year. I Don't Subscribe To The Theory By Which We Only Become Truly Adult When Our Parents Die; We Never Become Truly Adult.

The Press May Hate Me, And I Know My Battles With Them Are Not Over, But That Doesn't Matter.

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.

When A Country Is Strong... It Accepts Any Dose Of Pessimism From Its Writers.

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.

Rumor Had It That He Was Homosexual; In Reality, In Recent Years, He Was Simply A Garden-variety Alcoholic.

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.

Of Course, We Can Distinguish Between Males And Females; We Can Also, If We Choose, Distinguish Between Different Age Categories; But Any More Advanced Distinction Comes Close To Pedantry, Probably A Result Of Boredom. A Creature That Is Bored Elaborates Distinctions And Hierarchies. According To Hutchinson And Rawlins, The Development Of Systems Of Hierarchical Dominance Within Animal Societies Does Not Correspond To Any Practical Necessity, Nor To Any Selective Advantage; It Simply Constitutes A Means Of Combating The Crushing Boredom Of Life In The Heart Of Nature.

I Think It's More Difficult To Live Without A Religion, Definitely.

Anything Can Happen In Life, Especially Nothing.

Anything Can Happen

In My Own Writing, I Think Of Myself As A Realist Who Exaggerates A Little.

When You Read The Koran, You Give Up. At Least The Bible Is Very Beautiful Because Jews Have An Extraordinary Literary Talent.

Not Having Anything Around To Read Is Dangerous: You Have To Content Yourself With Life Itself, And That Can Lead You To Take Risks.

The Terrible Predicament Of A Beautiful Girl Is That Only An Experienced Womanizer, Someone Cynical And Without Scruple, Feels Up To The Challenge. More Often Than Not, She Will Lose Her Virginity To Some Filthy Lowlife In What Proves To Be The First Step In An Irrevocable Decline.

The Americans Are Completely Stupid. The Intellectual Level In Any Single European Country Is Higher Than In America.

The Love Of A Dog Is A Pure Thing. He Gives You A Trust Which Is Total. You Must Not Betray It.

Without Beauty A Girl Is Unhappy Because She Has Missed Her Chance To Be Loved. People Do Not Jeer At Her, They Are Not Cruel To Her, But It Is As If She Were Invisible, No Eyes Follow Her As She Walks. People Feel Uncomfortable When They Are With Her. They Find It Easier To Ignore Her. A Girl Who Is Exceptionally Beautiful, On The Other Hand, Who Has Something Which Too Far Surpasses The Customary Seductive Freshness Of Adolescence, Appears Somehow Unreal. Great Beauty Seems Invariably To Portend Some Tragic Fate.

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.

Now Abideth Beauty, Truth, And Intensity; But The Greatest Of These Is Intensity.

Polemical Debates Happen All The Time In France.

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.

Just Like Unrestrained Economic Liberalism, And For Similar Reasons, Sexual Liberalism Produces Phenomena Of Absolute Pauperization. Some Men Make Love Every Day; Others Five Or Six Times In Their Life, Or Never. Some Make Love With Dozens Of Women, Others With None. It’s What’s Known As ‘the Law Of The Market’… In A Totally Liberal Sexual System Certain People Have A Varied And Exciting Erotic Life; Others Are Reduced To Masturbation And Solitude.

I Think She Is Going To Find You Too Old... Yes That Was It, The Moment She Said It I Knew It Was True, And The Revelation Caused Me No Surprise, It Was Like The Echo Of A Dull, Not Unexpected Shock. The Age Difference Was The Last Taboo, The Final Limit, All The Stronger For The Fact That It Remained The Last And Had Replaced All The Others. In The Modern World You Could Be A Swinger, Bi, Trans, Zoo Into S&m, But It Was Forbidden To Be Old.

To The End, I Will Remain A Child Of Europe, Of Worry And Of Shame. I Have No Message Of Hope To Deliver. For The West, I Do Not Feel Hatred. At Most I Feel A Great Contempt. I Know Only That Every Single One Of Us Reeks Of Selfishness, Masochism And Death. We Have Created A System In Which It Has Simply Become Impossible To Live, And What's More, We Continue To Export It.

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.

In Reality, The Monotheist Texts Preach Neither Peace, Love Nor Tolerance. They Are Texts Of Hate.

I Think That If Writers Don't Speak About Real Life, It's Because They Don't Know It.

Why Am I Popular? I Don't Know. Is It A Mistake? I Should Think It's A Mistake Somewhere.

I Hadn’t Seen Any Novel Make The Statement That Entering The Workforce Was Like Entering The Grave. That From Then On, Nothing Happens And You Have To Pretend To Be Interested In Your Work. And, Furthermore, That Some People Have A Sex Life And Others Don’t Just Because Some Are More Attractive Than Others. I Wanted To Acknowledge That If People Don’t Have A Sex Life, It’s Not For Some Moral Reason, It’s Just Because They’re Ugly. Once You’ve Said It, It Sounds Obvious, But I Wanted To Say It.

It's A Curious Idea To Reproduce When You Don't Even Like Life.

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Jean Jacques Rousseau

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An Entire Life Spent Reading Would Have Fulfilled My Every Desire; I Already Knew That At The Age Of Seven. The Texture Of The World Is Painful, Inadequate; Unalterable, Or So It Seems To Me. Really, I Believe That An Entire Life Spent Reading Would Have Suited Me Best. Such A Life Has Not Been Granted Me.

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The Triumph Of Vegetation Is Total.

The Most Stupid Religion Is Islam.

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When We Think About The Present, We Veer Wildly Between The Belief In Chance And The Evidence In Favour Of Determinism. When We Think About The Past, However, It Seems Obvious That Everything Happened In The Way That It Was Intended.

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Love Binds, And It Binds Forever. Good Binds While Evil Unravels. Separation Is Another Word For Evil; It Is Also Another Word For Deceit.

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