Louis-Ferdinand Céline Quotes

Lovely sight, the Apocalypse! But absurdity, without limits? No Sir! there have to be certain limits...

Of course the people in the metro didn't see a thing!...what a joke! petrified ratlets! but they'll still come out to refute me! make claims!...that nothing got bombed!...squished! powdered! that the firmament was calm, and me, I imagined the whole thing! chrysanthemums, sprays, roses! why, there's no more any such thing as sky-hooking shrapnel than there is anal ice cream! it's all in my mind! hallucinations and bullshit! what a crook! but I repeat and reassert! shrapnel and fiery lace stretched from one end of the horizon to the other! with lots of glow-worms mixed in...and dancing purple fireflies...

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

History doesn't pass the dishes again.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

If you aren't rich you should always look useful.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

The forest is only waiting for their signal to start trembling, hissing, and roaring from its depths. An enormous, love-maddened, unlighted railway station, full to bursting. Whole trees bristling with living noise makers, mutilated erections, horror.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Dreams rise in the darkness and catch fire from the mirage of moving light. What happens on the screen isn't quite real; it leaves open a vague cloudy space for the poor, for dreams and the dead. Hurry hurry, cram yourself full of dreams to carry you through the life that's waiting for you outside, when you leave here, to help you last a few days more in that nightmare of things and people. Among the dreams, choose the ones most likely to warm your soul.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Death after all is only a matter of a few hours, a few minutes, but a pension is like poverty, it lasts a whole lifetime. Rich people are drunk in a different way, they can't understand this frenzy about security. Being rich is another kind of drunkenness, the forgetful kind. That, in fact, is the whole point of getting rich: to forget.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

I hadn't found out yet that mankind consists of two very different races, the rich and the poor. It took me ... and plenty of other people . . . twenty years and the war to learn to stick to my class and ask the price of things before touching them, let alone setting my heart on them.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Who is the true friend of the people? Fascism is. Who has done the most for the working man? The USSR or Hitler? Hitler has... Who has done the most for the small businessman? Not Thorez but Hitler!

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

There's something sad about people going to bed. You can see they don't give a damn whether they're getting what they want out of life or not, you can see they don't even try to understand what we're here for. They just don't care.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Here we are, alone again. It's all so slow, so heavy, so sad. . . I'll be old soon. Then at last it will be over. So many people have come into my room. They've talked. They haven't said much. They've gone away. They've grown old, wretched, sluggish, each in some corner of the world.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

I'd take cyanide no problem if it was that or throwing a cat out in the street, even a moth-eaten, mangy, caterwauling pain in the ass! I'd rather have the thing in bed with me than see it suffer on my account...though when it comes to human beings, I'm only interested in the sick...the ones who can stand up are nothing but mounds of vice and spite...I don't get mixed up in their schemes...

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Travel is useful, it exercises the imagination. All the rest is disappointment and fatigue. Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength.It goes from life to death. People, animals, cities, things, all are imagined. It's a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littre says so and he's never wrong.And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes.It's on the other side of life.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

My mother, writing from France, admonished me to take care of my health as she had during the war. My head could be all set for the guillotine, and still my mother would scold me for forgetting my muffler. She never missed an opportunity to try and convince me that the world is a kindly place and that she'd done a good job in conceiving me. This alleged Providence was the great subterfuge of maternal thoughtlessness.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

I have no ideas, myself! Not a one! there's nothing more vulgar, more common, more disgusting than ideas! libraries are loaded with them! and every sidewalk cafe!...the impotent are bloated with ideas!...they dazzle youth with ideas! they play the pimp!...and youth is ever ready, as you know, Professor, to gobble up anything, to go OOH! and AAH! by the numbers! How those pimps have an easy job of it! the passionate years of youth are spent getting a hard on and gargling ideeaas!...philosophies, if you prefer!...yes sir, philosophies! youth loves sham just as young dogs love those sticks, like bones, that we throw and they run after! they race forward, yipping away, wasting their time, that's the main thing!

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

In my room I'd barely closed my eyes when the blonde from the movie house came along and sang her whole song of sorrow just for me. I helped her put me to sleep, so to speak, and succeeded pretty well... I wasn't entirely alone... It's not possible to sleep alone...

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

I crawled back into myself all alone, just delighted to observe that I was even more miserable than before, because I had brought a new kind of distress and something that resembled true feeling into my solitude.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

If only I had met Molly sooner, when it was still possible to choose one road rather than another. Before that bitch Musyne and that little turd Lola crimped my enthusiasm. But it was too late to start being young again. I didn't believe in it anymore. We grow old so quickly and, what's more, irremediably. You can tell by the way you start loving your misery in spite of yourself. Nature is stronger than we are, no two ways about it. She tries us in one particular mold, and we're never able to throw it off. I had started out as the restless type. Little by little, without realizing it, you begin to take your role and fate seriously, and before you know it, it's too late to change. You're a hundred-percent restless, and it's set that way for good.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

I don't have to worry about Madame Ouche! she'll still be robbing me blind when she's dead!...having made her last confession and received extreme unction...all the cataclysms will pass over her without harming a single gray hair on her head! it's a paradise here for scum like her, on earth as there is in heaven...they don't really die, the sluts, the hussies, the really awful ones, they just go from one paradise to another, with their money, servants, cars...just buy their cute little ticket and off they go! final absolution and see you later! they shit in your hands!...they're born to slip out of both hells - the one here and the one in the next world...all they do is fuck and whine...loads of cash! never broke!...cheers! here's to you! no regrets! you realize too late...

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

The mother was looking at nothing and listening to nothing but herself. “It’ll kill me, doctor! I’ll die of shame!” I made no attempt to dissuade her. I didn’t know what to do. We could see the father pacing back and forth in the little dining room next door. Apparently he hadn’t finished composing his attitude for the occasion. Maybe he was waiting for things to come to a head before selecting a posture. He was in a kind of limbo. People live from one play to the next. In between, before the curtain goes up, they don’t quite know what the plot will be or what part will be right for them, they stand there at a loss, waiting to see what will happen, their instincts folded up like an umbrella, squirming, incoherent, reduced to themselves, that is, to nothing. Cows without a train.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Our life is a journey, through winter and night, We look for our way, in a sky without light. (Song of the Swiss Guards, 1793)

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Poor people never, or hardly ever, ask for an explanation of all they have to put up with. They hate one another, and content themselves with that.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

A man should be resigned to knowing himself a little better each day if he hasn't got the guts to put an end to his sniveling once and for all.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

We have got into the habit of admiring colossal bandits, whose opulence is revered by the entire world, yet whose existence, once we stop to examine it, proves to be one long crime repeated ad infinitum, but those same bandits are heaped with glory, honors, and power, their crimes are hallowed by the law of the land, whereas, as far back in history as the eye can see—and history, as you know is my business—everything conspires to show that a venial theft, especially of inglorious foodstuffs, such as bread crusts, ham, or cheese, unfailingly subjects its perpetrator to irreparable opprobrium, the categoric condemnation of the community, major punishment, automatic dishonor, and inexpiable shame, and this for two reasons, first because the perpetrator of such an offense is usually poor, which in itself connotes basic unworthiness, and secondly because his act implies, as it were, a tacit reproach to the community. A poor man’s theft is seen as a malicious attempt at individual redress . . . Where would we be? Note accordingly that in all countries the penalties for petty theft are extremely severe, not only as a means of defending society, but also as a stern admonition to the unfortunate to know their place, stick to their caste, and behave themselves, joyfully resigned to go on dying of hunger and misery down through the centuries forever and ever …

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

A poor man in this world can be done to death in two main ways, by the absolute indifference of his fellows in peacetime or by their homicidal mania when there's a war.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

There would be nothing but darkness, same darkness as everywhere else, an enormous darkness that swallowed up the road two steps ahead of us, only a little sliver of road about the size of your tongue was spared by the darkness.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

...she robbed me blind, the bitch!...and she's still at it! everyone who's ever done me wrong, robbed me, repudiated me, pillaged me has never suffered...and never will suffer! you could call it their reward!...robbing me brings you good luck!

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

I've got quite a memory. Engraved in my mind, things are. I can't forget anything...It's not a sign of intelligence...Nothing to boast about, memory...that's just how it is...

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past. It's frightening how many people and things there are in a man's past that have stopped moving. The living people we've lost in the crypts of time sleep so soundly side by side with the dead that the same darkness envelops them all.As we grow older, we no longer know whom to awaken, the living or the dead.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Now was the time to make quick tracks. Back to Fort-Gono, retrace my steps? Try to explain my conduct and the circumstances of the present disaster? I hesitated . . . Not for long. Nothing can be explained. The world only knows how to do one thing, to roll over and kill you, as a sleeper kills his fleas. That would be a stupid way to die, I said to myself, to let myself be crushed like everybody else. To put your trust in men is to get yourself killed a little.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

...apparently "London" gave out my address! that's what they're saying...not just London, though! Brazzaville, too!...and said that I'm a dirty pornographer...a letch besides being the most despicable traitor of the century!...I'd make a urinal blush! that what we need is to cleanse France and the French language of this smut-writing, demoralizing, grammaclast who's sullying our sacred homeland and its literary heritage!

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Anybody who talks about the future is a bastard, it's the present that counts. Invoking posterity is like making speeches to worms.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

The rich don't have to kill to eat. They employ people, as they call it. The rich don't do evil themselves. They pay. People do all they can to please them, and everybody's happy.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

One little second of pleasure, a whole life of pain...my mother knew nothing of the pleasures of a good roll in the hay...she missed out on all that...like me, her son...a lifetime of sacrifice!...the woman who can grunt and rave in the throes of a deep fuck can die happy...

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Chin up, Ferdinand," I kept saying to myself, to keep up my courage. "What with being chucked out of everywhere, you're sure to find whatever it is that scares all those bastards so. It must be at the end of the night, and that's why they're so dead set against going to the end of the night.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

You know about innards? The trick they play on tramps in the country? They stuff an old wallet with putrid chicken innards. Well, take it from me, a man is just like that, except that he's fatter and hungrier and can move around, and inside there's a dream.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

We've no use for intellectuals in this outfit. What we need is chimpanzees. Let me give you a word of advice: never say a word to us about being intelligent. We will think for you, my friend. Don't forget it.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

A woman who spends her time worrying about pregnancy is a virtual cripple, she'll never go very far.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

"Fine! Fine! I'm listening...but it's not very interesting!... "Oh, that's what you think! that's what you think! but nothing is very interesting, dear Professor Y! jot this down! take some notes!" "What notes?" "Just write!...that if it weren't for wars, alcohol, blood pressure and cancer, the people in our atheistic Europe would soon be bored to death of life!

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

It is of men, and of them only, that one should always be frightened.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Life must go on, even if it's no joke...just pretend to believe in the future.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

The mind is satisfied with phrased, but not the body, the body is more fastidious, it wants muscles. A body always tells the truth, that's why it's usually depressing and disgusting to look at.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

There is no rest for the humble except in despising the great, whose only thought of the people is inspired by self-interest or sadism.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn’t enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I’ve never been able to kill myself.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Philosophizing is simply one way of being afraid, a cowardly pretense that doesn't get you anywhere.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline

I have never voted in my life... I have always known and understood that the idiots are in a majority so it's certain they will win.

Louis-Ferdinand Céline