Quotes from Louis-Ferdinand Celine

To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!

With two thousand years of Christianity behind him... a man can't see a regiment of soldiers march past without going off the deep end. It starts off far too many ideas in his head.

Lots of men are like that, their artistic leanings never go beyond a weakness for shapely thighs.

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.

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.

History doesn't pass the dishes again.

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

To philosophize is only another way of being afraid and leads hardly anywhere but to cowardly make-believe.

Truth is a pain which will not stop. And the truth of this world is to die. You must choose: either dying or lying. Personally, I have never been able to kill myself.

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.

Life is filigree work. What is written clearly is not worth much, it's the transparency that counts.

Our journey is entirely imaginary. That is its strength.

That is perhaps what we seek throughout life, that and nothing more, the greatest possible sorrow so as to become fully ourselves before dying.

Only a complete alcoholic can think life is funny ... any life!.

whenever they get a chance, never fear, people make you waste hours and months ... they use you as a wall to bounce their bullshit off of ... blah! and blah! and blahblahblah! ... you put up with it for an hour, you'll need two weeks to recover ... blah! blah!

A God who counts minutes and pennies, a desperate sensual God, who grunts like a pig. A pig with golden wings, who falls and falls, always belly side up, ready for caresses, that's him, our master. Come, kiss me.

troubles are as endless as pleasures are brief ...

Love is the infinite placed within the reach of poodles. I have my dignity!

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

We never change. Neither our socks nor our masters nor our opinions, or we're so slow about it that it's no use. We were born loyal and that's what killed us! Soldiers free of charge, heroes for everyone else, talking monkeys, tortured words, we are the minions of King Misery...It's not a life.

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

People cling to their rotten memories, to all their misfortunes, and you can't pry them loose. These things keep them busy. They avenge themselves for the injustice of the present by smearing the future inside them with this shit. They're cowards deep down, and just. That's their nature.

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.

This instinctive repulsion which tradespeople inspire in men of sensitive feeling is one of the very rare consolations for being so impoverished which are given to those of us who don't sell anything to anybody.