Louis-Ferdinand Céline
41 quotes
Biography
"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."
"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."
"Philosophizing is simply one way of being afraid, a cowardly pretense that doesn't get you anywhere."
"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."
"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."
"I should be able to get the alligators to dance to the tune of the pan pipe."
"I should give all the works of Baudelaire for a female Olympic swimmer."
"God is being repaired."
"Hate gave birth to the slang; Slang (‘argot’) exists not anymore."
"I clearly see you a tapeworm, but not a cobra, not a cobra at all...no good at the flute! (…) I’ll go applaud you when you finally become a true monster, when you’ll have paid them, the witches, what you have to, their price, so they transmute you, blossom you, into a true phenomenon. Into a tapeworm that plays the flute. (To the Fidgeting Lunatic)"
"You can be a virgin in horror the same as in sex."
"I believed in her body, I didn't believe in her soul. I thought of Lola as a charming goldbrick, miles away from the war, miles away from life."
"The sadness of the world has different ways of getting to people, but it seems to succeed almost every time."
"Then I fell sick, I was delirious, driven mad by fear, they said at the hospital. Maybe so. The best thing to do when you're in this world, don't you agree, is to get out of it. Crazy or not, scared or not."
"The poetry of heroism appeals irresistibly to those who don't go to a war, and even more to those whom the war is making enormously wealthy. It's always so."
"Everything interesting takes place in the dark; there is no doubt about it. We know nothing of the true story of the men. ― [6]"
"Almost every desire a poor man has is a punishable offence.[16]"
"We are, by nature, so futile that distraction alone can prevent us from dying altogether.[17]"
"Love is infinity - come down to poodles' level.[1]"
"It's harder to lose the wish to love than the wish to live.[7]"
"Living, just by itself - what a dirge that is! Life is a classroom and boredom's the usher, there all the time to spy on you; whatever happens, you've got to look as if you were awfully busy all the time doing something that's terribly exciting - or he'll come along and nibble your brain.[32]"
"The one who talks about the future is a rascal. The present is the only thing that matters. To invoke one’s posterity is to make a speech to maggots. [4]"
"A woman who spends her time worrying about pregnancy is a virtual cripple; she'll never go very far.― [7]"
"I warn you that when the princes of this world start loving you it means they are going to grind you up into battle sausage. ― [6]"
"If you aren't rich you should always look useful."