The absence of the will to live is, alas, not sufficient to make one want to die.
Michel HouellebecqRead
Life is painful and disappointing. It is useless, therefore, to write new realistic novels. We generally know where we stand in relation to reality and don’t care to know any more.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Life often involves suffering and disillusionment, making the creation of realistic literature seem redundant.
In this quote, Michel Houellebecq reflects on the inherent pain and disappointment in life, suggesting that these emotions are universal truths that render the writing of new realistic novels unnecessary. According to him, people already have a grasp of their experiences in relation to reality and often lack the desire for deeper exploration of such themes in literature.
Themes
LifePainDisappointmentRealityLiterature
In practice
Example use cases
This quote could be used in a literary critique about the purpose of realism in contemporary fiction.
More from Michel Houellebecq
All quotes →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.
Michel HouellebecqRead
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.
Michel HouellebecqRead
Similar quotes
Nothing in all creation is so like God as stillness.
Meister EckhartRead
A custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black, stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
King James IRead
Tell me what you yearn for and I shall tell you who you are. We are what we reach for, the idealized image that drives our wandering.
James HillmanRead
The more we study the major problems of our time, the more we come to realise that they cannot be understood in isolation. They are systemic problems, which means that they are interconnected and interdependent.
Fritjof CapraRead
Hunger is a people-made phenomenon, so the central issue is power: the power of those who make the decisions about what is grown and who, or what, it's grown for.
Frances Moore LappRead
Prosperity knits a man to the world. He feels that he is finding his place in it, while really it is finding its place in him.
C. S. LewisRead