Quotes from 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.

The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death.

If you've got plenty of nerve, you're all set, because then you're entitled to do practically anything at all, you've got the majority on your side, and it's the majority who decide what's crazy and what isn't.

Autant pas se faire d'illusions, les gens n'ont rien à se dire, ils ne se parlent que de leurs peines à eux chacun, c'est entendu. Chacun pour soi, la terre pour tous.

One of these days you'll burst. So be it! One of these days , when the movement inside catches up with the movement outside, when your thoughts scatter far and wide and rise up at last to play with the stars.

C'est cela l'exil, l'étranger, cette inexorable observation de l'existence telle qu'elle est vraiment pendant ces quelques heures, lucides, exceptionnelles dans la trame du temps humain, où les habitudes du pays précédent vous abandonnent, sans que les autres, les nouvelles, vous aient encore suffisamment abruti.

Everything's permissible internally.

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

Si les gens sont si méchants, c'est peut-être seulement parce qu'ils souffrent, mais le temps est long qui sépare le moment où ils ont cessé de souffrir de celui où ils deviennent un peu meilleurs.

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!

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 ...

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.

A village, even a small one, takes at least all night to burn, in the end it looks like an enormous flower, then there's only a bud, and after that nothing.

Almost every desire a poor man has is a punishable offense.

Children don't know the law. Their parents slap them to teach them the law and protect them from pleasure. There's

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.

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...

He's fiddling around in his pocket...nothing to worry about...all the young ones fiddle around in their pockets...a pistol? an erection?

A bien calculer quand on songe, c'est peut-être ça L'Espérance ? Et l'avenir esthétique aussi ! Des guerres qu'on saura plus pourquoi !... De plus en plus formidables ! Qui laisseront plus personne tranquille !... que tout le monde en crèvera... deviendra des héros sur place... et poussière par-dessus le marché !... Qu'on débarrassera la Terre... Qu'on a jamais servi à rien... Le nettoyage par l'Idée...

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.

Businessmen all think of themselves as big or little professional wizards, but in practice they usually turn out to be hopeless incompetents.

There won't be any love to spare in this world as long as there's five francs.

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.

The biggest defeat in every department of life is to forget.