Louis-Ferdinand Celine Quotes & Sayings

The best way to make a sort of peace, a fragile armistice to be sure, but precious all the same, with men, officers or not, is to let them bask and wallow in childish self-glorification. There's no such thing as intelligent vanity. It's an instinct. And you'll never find a man who is not first and formenost vain. The role of admiring doormat is about the only one that one man is glad to tolerate in another. With these soldiers I had no need to tax my imagination. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

That street was like a dismal gash, endless, with us at the bottom of it, filling it from side to side, advancing from sorrow to sorrow, toward an end that is never in sight, the end of all the streets in the world. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Since life consists of madness spiked with lies, the farther you are from each other the more lies you can put into it and the happier you'll be. That's only natural and normal. Truth is inedible. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

In the art of squeezing the last ounce of labor out of a two-legged animal, those primitive ancients were pretentious incompetents! Did they ever think of calling their slave "Monsieur" or letting him vote now and then, or giving him his newspaper? And especially had they thought of sending him to war to work off his passions? After twenty centuries of Christianity (as I personally can bear witness) your modern man simply can't control himself when a regiment passes before his eyes. It puts too many ideas into his head. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Those people were pushing life and night and day in front of them. Life hides everything from people. Their own noise prevents them from hearing anything else. They couldn't care less. The bigger and taller the city, the less they care. Take it from me. I've tried. It's a waste of time. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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

Women always have some mental reservation. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

An unfamiliar city is a fine thing. That's the time and place when you can suppose that all the people you meet are nice. It's dream time. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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 Celine

"Okay! ... my three dots! have people ever reproached me for them! they've slobbered on about my three dots! ... 'Ah! his three dots! ... Ah, his three dots! ... He can't finish his sentences!' Every stupidity in the book! every one, Colonel!"
"So?"
"Go!pss!pss! ... piss off, Colonel! and what's your opinion, Colonel?"
"Instead of those three dots, you might just as well put in a few words, that's what I feel!" — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

When it becomes really impossible to get away and sleep, then the will to live evaporates of its own accord. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

But women aren't just bodies! ... boor! they're "companions" as well! what of their charms, their grace, their twitterings? sure, sure! if suicide appeals to you ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Reason died in 1914, November 1914 ... after that everybody began to rave ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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 Celine

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. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Blessed are those who can content themselves with whorehouses! Parapine, — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Take Marcus Aurelius! That's right! What did that old bugger do? In very similar situations! Harassed! Maligned! Transduced! On the brink of succumbing under the welter if abject plots ... of murderous perfidies! ... He withdrew, Ferdinand! ... He abandoned the steps of the Forum to the jackals! Yes! In solitude! In exile! That's where he sought his balm! That's where he found new courage! ... That's right! ... He took counsel on himself! And no one else! ... He didn't ask the mad dogs for their opinion! ... No! Faugh! ... Ah, despicable recantation! ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The more one is hated, I find, the happier one is. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Interrupted again! if it's not Jules it's the cat! that's the female speciality: interruptions! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Near the kiosk the old lady who sold refreshments seemed slowly to be gathering all the shadows of evening about her skirts. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

You can be anywhere in the world ... under confetti, under bombs, in cellar or stratosphere, prison or embassy, on the equator in Trondhjem, you'll never go wrong, you'll get a direct response ... all they want of you is that famous Parisian vagina! la Parisienne! your man sees himself wedged between her thighs in epileptic bliss, full nuptial flight, inundating the barisienne with his enthusiasm ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

[T]he Dollar is always too light, a genuine Holy Ghost, more precious than blood. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The religion of the flag promptly replaced the cult of heaven, an old cloud which had already been deflated by the Reformation and reduced to a network of episcopal money boxes. In olden times the fanatical fashion was: 'Long live Jesus! Burn the heretics!' . . . But heretics, after all, were few and voluntary . . . Whereas today vast hordes of men are fired with aim and purpose by cries of 'Hang the limp turnips! The juiceless lemons! The innocent readers! By the millions, eyes right!' If anybody doesn't want to fight or murder, grab 'em, tear 'em to pieces! Kill them in thirteen juicy ways. For a starter, to teach them how to live, rip their guts out of their bodies, their eyes out of their sockets, and the years out of their filthy slobbering lives! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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 Celine

Experience is a dim lamp, which only lights the one who bears it. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

All the currencies of Europe are relatives of the Dollar. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

A little inventor, that's it! ... of a little gimmick! ... just a little gimmick that's all! ... I don't fling out messages to the world! ... not me, no sir! I don't clutter up the air with my thoughts! not me! I don't get high on words, nor on port, nor on the flattery of youth! ... I don't cogitate for the universe. I'm just a little inventor, of a two-bit gimmick at that! and that won't last long! like everything else! like the swivel-stem collar button! I'm aware of my paltry importance! anything rather than ideas! ... I leave ideas to the flea merchants! all ideas! to the hucksters, the pimps, the confusion mongers! ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

An Immense hatred keeps me alive ... i would live for a thousand years if i were certain of seeing the whole world croak. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Everything that's important goes on in the darkness, no doubt about it. We never know anyone's real inside story. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Man hardly comes in more than two varieties, wherever he is, whatever he does: workers and pimps ... they're either one or the other! ... and inventors, the worst kind of jobholder! ... they stand condemned! ... the writer who doesn't pimp along, peacefully plagiarizing, who doesn't pump out the pop stuff, he's had it! ... everybody hates him! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

All that makes a lunatic are the very ordinary ideas of mankind shut up inside a man's head. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

If it is your duty to croak like the toad, then
go ahead! And with all your might! Make them
hear you! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

My trouble is insomnia. If I had always slept properly, I'd never have written a line. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

At ninety-eight point six everything is boring. Yet — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

So many vaginas, stomachs, cocks, snouts, and flies you don't know what to do with them ... shovelsfull! ... but hearts? ... very rare! in the last five hundred million years too many cocks and gastric tubes to count ... but hearts? ... on your fingers! ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Medicine is a thankless profession. When you get paid by the rich, you feel like a flunky, by the poor like a thief. How can you take a fee from people who can't afford to eat or go to the movies? Especially when they're at their last gasp. It's not easy. You let it ride. You get soft-hearted. And your ship goes down. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Nearly all a poor bastard's desires are punishable by jail. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

To make a long story short, you're all vile, dangerous, cowardly ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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 Celine

Pliny paid for his "phenomena"! ... I've paid a bit, too ... everything worthwhile has its cost! ... if it's free, you're down with the shithead fraternity! blabbermouths, charlatans, the whole gang! ... into the crapper with 'em! every one! right in the shitter! ... it's unlistenable! ... just a bunch of farts! ... I'm telling you! ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

That's how I am! eyes peeled, scientific! first things first! the big ones! the small ones! ... if they're going to behead you ... for example! ... you don't take your eyes of the guillotine! ... look, the blade's dull!
-Executioner! you shout, hey, you lazy fucker! don't you have anyone sharpening that thing?
And the executioner scurries off, shit-assed and sheepish! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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 Celine

If you aren't rich you should always look useful. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Priests know how to bury the worst scandals. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

As long as we're young, we manage to find excuses for the stoniest indifference, the most blatant caddishness, we put them down to emotional eccentricity or some sort of romantic inexperience. But later on, when life shows us how much cunning, cruelty, and malice are required just to keep the body at ninety-eight point six, we catch on, we know the scene, we begin to understand how much swinishness it takes to make up a past. Just take a close look at yourself and the degree of rottenness you've come to. There's no mystery about it, no more room for fairy tales; if you've lived this long, it's because you've squashed any poetry you had in you. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Even diseases have lost their prestige, there aren't so many of them left. Think it over ... no more syphilis, no more clap, no more typhoid ... antibiotics have taken half the tragedy out of medicine. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

There is 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 ever try to understand what we're here for. They just don't care. Americans or not, they sleep no matter what, they're bloated mollusks, no sensibility, no trouble with their conscience.
I'd seen too many troubling things to be easy in my mind. I knew too much and not enough. I'd better go out, I said to myself, I'd better go out again. Maybe I'll meet Robinson. Naturally that was an idiotic idea, but I dreamed it up as an excuse for going out again, because no matter how I tossed and turned on my narrow bed, I couldn't snatch the tiniest scrap of sleep. Even masturbation, at times like that, provides neither comfort nor entertainment. Then you're really in despair. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Compared with the addiction to perfect forms, cocaine is a pastime for stationmasters. But — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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 Celine

Study changes a man, puts pride into him. You need it to get to the bottom of life. Without it you just skim the surface. You think you're in the know, but trifles throw you off. You dream too much. You content yourself with words instead of going deeper. That's not what you wanted. Intentions, appearances, no more. A man of character can't content himself with that. Medicine, even if I wasn't very gifted, had brought me a good deal closer to people, to animals, everything. Now all I had to do was plunge straight into the heart of things. Death is chasing you, you've got to hurry, and while you're looking you've got to eat, and keep away from wars. That's a lot of things to do. It's no picnic. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I was in full digression! far from the subject! ... my colonel was losing track ... rapidly, of my story! my story! ... my own story! ... the gifts that I had personally received from Heaven! ... yet I had insisted, every time! truly extraordinary gifts! ... I'd made him repeat them a hundred times! ... enough so he'd remember! that I was the only true genius! the century's only writer! the proof: that no one ever spoke of me! ... everyone was jealous! Nobel! no Nobel! they had all joined forces to have me executed! ... they could just go fuck off! ... drop dead! since it was a question of death between me and them! I'll send their readers packing! all their readers! I'll make the public grow sick of their books! cabal! no cabal! since there was no room for two styles! ... it was mine or theirs! ... crawl or breastroke! ... you understand! ... the only inventor of the century! is me! me! me right here! the only genius, you might say! damned or not! ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The poetry of heroism holds an irresistible appeal for people who aren't involved in a war, especially when they're making piles of money out of one. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Now I know... we have at least two friends!... Cillie von Leiden and the hunchback... not bad in our situation... or, come right down to it, no matter where and when, peace, dead calm, wars, convulsions... so many vaginas, stomachs, cocks, snouts, and flies you don't know what to do with them... shovelsful!... but hearts?... very rare! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

After all, when our egoism lets us go for a while, when it comes time to throw it off, the only women whose memory you cherish in your hearts are the ones who really loved men a little, not just one man, even if it was you, but the whole lot. When — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

I cannot refrain from doubting that there exist any genuine realizations of our deepest character except war and illness, those two infinities of nightmare. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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 Celine

Most people die at the last minute; others twenty years beforehand, some even earlier. They are the wretched of the earth. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Life is filigree work. What is written clearly is not worth much, it's the transparency that counts. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Poverty is a giant, it uses your face like a mop to wipe away the world's garbage. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Two years is the time it takes to perceive at one glance, a glance as sure as instinct, the ugliness that can come over a face, even one that was delicious in its day. For — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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 Celine

A time comes when you're all alone, when you've come to the end of everything that can happen to you. It's the end of the world. Even grief, your own grief, doesn't answer you anymore, and you have to retrace your steps, to go back among people, it makes no difference who. You're not choosy at times like that, because even to weep you have to go back where everything starts all over, back among people. "What — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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 Celine

Love is like liquor, the drunker and more impotent you are, the stronger and smarter you think yourself and the surer you are of your rights. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Lots of men are like that, their artistic leanings never go beyond a weakness for shapely thighs. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The whole business of your life overwhelms you when you live alone. One's stupefied by it. To get rid of it you try to daub some of it off on to people who come to see you, and they hate that. To be alone trains one for death. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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 Celine

what? When men can hate without risk, their stupidity is easily convinced, the motives supply themselves. From — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The main thing isn't knowing whether you're right or wrong. That really doesn't matter ... The main thing is to keep people from bothering you ... The rest is eyewash ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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 Celine

Over our heads, two millimetres, maybe one millimetre from our temples, those long tempting lines of steel that bullets make when they're out to kill you were whistling through the hot summer air.
I'd never felt so useless as I did amid all those bullets in the sunlight. A vast and universal mockery. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

We're workers, they say. Work, they call it! That's the crummiest part of the whole business. We're down in the hold, heaving and panting, stinking and sweating our balls off, and meanwhile! Up on deck in the fresh air, what do you see?! Our masters having a fine time with beautiful pink and perfumed women on their laps. They send for us, we're brought up on deck. They put on their top hats and give us a big spiel like as follows: "You no-good swine! We're at war! Those stinkers in Country No. 2! We're going to board them and cut their livers out! Let's go! Let's go! We've got everything we need on board! All together now! Let's hear you shout so the deck trembles: 'Long live Country No. 1!' So you'll be heard for miles around. The man that shouts the loudest will get a medal and a lollipop! Let's — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The plain truth, I may as well admit it, is that I've never been really right in the head. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

"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 Celine

It happened, you see, after the war, when I saw people making money while the others were dying in the trenches. You saw it and you couldn't do anything about it. Then later I was at the League of Nations, and there I saw the light. I really saw the world was ruled by the Golden Calf, by Mammon! Oh, no kidding! Implacably. Social consciousness certainly came to me late. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Suddenly he fell asleep in the candlelight. After a while I got up to look at his face. He slept like everybody else. He looked quite ordinary. There ought to be some mark by which to distinguish good from the bad. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

That's the way it goes. You can't deny it, men have a hard time doing all that's demanded of them: butterflies in their youth, maggots at the end. I — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

A few poetic regrets, if adroitly placed, are as becoming to a woman as gossamer hair in the moonlight. What — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

She was having an attack of knuckleheaded anxiety. Those attacks last a long time. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

After conscientiously tasting fritters every day for a month Lola had put on two pounds! Her little belt bore witness to the disaster, she found herself obliged to move on to the next notch. She burst into tears. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

In the kitchens of love, after all, vice is like the pepper in a good sauce; it brings out the flavor, it's indispensable. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

She knew her duty inside and out. The prosperity of the cash drawer brought happiness to husband and wife. Not that Madame Puta was bad looking, not at all, she could even, like so many others, have been rather pretty, but she was so careful, so distrustful that she stopped short of beauty just as she stopped short of life - her hair was a little too well dressed, her smile a little too facile and sudden, and her gestures a bit too abrupt or too furtive. You racked your brains trying to figure out what was too calculated about her and why you always felt uneasy when she came near you. This instinctive revulsion that shopkeepers inspire in anyone who goes near them who knows what's what, is one of the few consolations for being as down at heel as people who don't sell anything to anybody tend to be. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

When you stay too long in the same place, things and people go to pot on you, they rot and start stinking for your special benefit. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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 Celine

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 any more! 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 mould, 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 per cent restless, and it's set that way for good. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Poverty is a giant who uses your features like a piece of cotton waste to wipe a filthy world. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The beginning of genius is being scared shitless. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Never be picky and choosy about means of escaping disembowelment, or waste your time trying to find reasons for the persecution you're a victim of. Escape is good enough for the wise. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

To travel is very useful, it makes the imagination work, the rest is just delusion and pain. Our journey is entirely imaginary, which is its strength — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

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 Celine

The novel can't compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who's had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

When I think now of all the lunatics I knew at Baryton's, I can't help suspecting that the only two manifestations of our innermost being are war and insanity, those two absolute nightmares. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

There's a point of poverty at which the spirit isn't with the body all the time. It finds the body really too unbearable. So it's almost as if you were talking to the soul itself. And a soul's not properly responsible. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Let's not forget, but make it our business to record the worst of the human viciousness we've seen without changing one word. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The new world, the communo-bourgeois, sermonizing, Tartuffian, automobilistic, alcoholic, gluttonous and cancerous world has only two anxieties: ass and bank account ... — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

It is, I believe, one of the few dangerous forms of eccentricity, a highly contagious mania, to be precise, of the rampant social variety! In your friend's case, we may not yet be dealing with out-and-out insanity ... No ... Maybe his trouble is only exaggerated conviction ... But the contagious manias are well known to me! ... I've known a good many sufferers from conviction mania ... Of many different types ... And in the last analysis, those who talk about justice seem to be the maddest of the lot! ... At first, I must confess, I took a certain interest in justice fanatics ... Today those particular maniacs annoy and exasperate me more than I can tell ... Don't you feel the same way? ... Human beings show a strange aptitude for transmitting this mania. It terrifies me, and we find it, mind you, in all human beings! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Never believe straight off in a man's unhappiness. Ask him if he can still sleep. If the answer's "yes," all's well. That is enough. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine