Quotes from 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.

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

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.

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.

She was having an attack of knuckleheaded anxiety. Those attacks last a long time.

Etre seul, c'est s'entrainer a la mort.

Poverty is a giant who uses your features like a piece of cotton waste to wipe a filthy world.

I don't know how to make friends and influence people, I fuck around too much, my reputation's bad.

y en a pas deux comme lui pour defendre la race francaise! Elle en a bien besoin la race francaise, puisqu elle n existe pas!

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose.

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.

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.

All in all, death is something like marriage.

There's no such thing as intelligent vanity. It's an instinct. And you'll never find a man who is not first and foremost vain.

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.