Michel Houellebecq, Soumission
13 quotes
"A woman is human, obviously, but she represents a slightly different kind of humanity."
"The past is always beautiful. So, for that matter, is the future. Only the present hurts, and we carry it around like an abscess of suffering, our compassion between two infinities of happiness and peace."
"Much, maybe too much, has been written about literature."
"He trusted that I would have a very pleasant stay: it was so peaceful, and the meals were delicious. As he said it, I realized that he was expressing not just a belief, but a hope, because he was one of those people, and you don't see them every day, who take an instinctive pleasure in the happiness of their fellow men – that he was, in other words, a nice guy."
"To love a book is, above all, to love its author: we want to meet him again, we want to spend our days with him."
"I maintained a tactical silence. When you maintain a tactical silence and look people right in the eye, as if drinking in their words, they talk. People like to be listened to, as every researcher knows--every researcher, every writer, every spy."
"He was a kind of éminence grise, a political leader, in a clandestine movement. Everyone knows there are girls who go for that kind of thing. There are girls who go for Huysmanists, for that matter. I once met a girl -- a pretty, attractive girl -- who told me she fantasized about Jean-François Copé. It took me several days to get over it. Really, with girls today, all bets are off."
"They were really willing to pay to avoid any trouble. No doubt they had overestimated the ability of academics to make a nuisance of themselves. It had been years since an academic title gained you access to major media.... Even if all the university professors in France had risen up in protest, almost nobody would have noticed, but apparently they hadn't found that out in Saudi Arabia. They still believed, deep down, in the power of the intellectual elite. It was almost touching."
"I was about as political as a bath towel."
"People like to be listened to, as every researcher knows – every researcher, every writer, every spy."
"Two years before, when the riots started, the media had had a field day, but now people discussed them less and less. ... ...in fact the media's attitude had changed over the last few months. No one talked about violence in the banlieues or race riots anymore. That was all passed over in silence."
"...intimacy isn't something men talk about. They may talk about politics, literature, stocks, or sports, depending on the man, but about their love lives they keep silent, even to their dying breath."
"Intimacy isn’t something men talk about."