Pedro > Pedro's Quotes

“Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world.”
― Michel Houellebecq, H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life

“My standard for verisimilitude is simple and I came to it when I started to write prose narrative: fuck the average reader. I was always told to write for the average reader in my newspaper life. The average reader, as they meant it, was some suburban white subscriber with two-point-whatever kids and three-point-whatever cars and a dog and a cat and lawn furniture. He knows nothing and he needs everything explained to him right away, so that exposition becomes this incredible, story-killing burden. Fuck him. Fuck him to hell.”
― David Simon

“It’s hard to understand other people, to know what’s hidden in their hearts, and without the assistance of alcohol it might never be done at all.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Submission

“People often say that the English are very cold fish, very reserved, that they have a way of looking at things – even tragedy – with a sense of irony. There’s some truth in it; it’s pretty stupid of them, though. Humor won’t save you; it doesn’t really do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn’t matter how brave you are, how reserved, or how much you’ve developed a sense of humor, you still end up with your heart broken. That’s when you stop laughing. In the end there’s just the cold, the silence and the loneliness. In the end, there’s only death.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“Irony won't save you from anything; humour doesn't do anything at all. You can look at life ironically for years, maybe decades; there are people who seem to go through most of their lives seeing the funny side, but in the end, life always breaks your heart. Doesn't matter how brave you are, or how reserved, or how much you've developed a sense of humour, you still end up with your heart broken. That's when you stop laughing.”
― Michel Houellebecq, The Elementary Particles

“It is in our relations with other people that we gain a sense of ourselves; it's that, pretty much, that makes relations with other people unbearable.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Platform

“What about you, Michel, what are you going to do here?'

The response closest to the truth was probably something like 'Nothing'; but it's always difficult to explain that kind of thing to an active person.”
― Michel Houellebecq, Platform

“Solitude gives birth to the original in us, to beauty unfamiliar and perilous - to poetry. But also, it gives birth to the opposite: to the perverse, the illicit, the absurd.”
― Thomas Mann, Death in Venice and Other Tales

“What was he doing? Reading a little, maybe. We can't even be sure of this. In fact, his biographers have to admit they don't know much at all, and that, judging from appearances - at least between the ages of eighteen and twenty-three - he did absolutely nothing.”
― Michel Houellebecq, H.P. Lovecraft: Against the World, Against Life