Quotes by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past. Its frightening how many people and things there are in a mans past that have stopped moving. The living people weve lost in the crypts of time sleep so soundly side by side with the dead that the same darkness envelops them all.As we grow older, we no longer know whom to awaken, the living or the dead.

Ive got quite a memory. Engraved in my mind, things are. I cant forget anything...Its not a sign of intelligence...Nothing to boast about, memory...thats just how it is...

You can lose your way groping among the shadows of the past.

...she robbed me blind, the bitch!...and shes still at it! everyone whos 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!

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.

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 theres a war.

We have got into the habit of admiring colossal bandits, whose opulence is revered by the entire world, yet whose existence, once we stop to examine it, proves to be one long crime repeated ad infinitum, but those same bandits are heaped with glory, honors, and power, their crimes are hallowed by the law of the land, whereas, as far back in history as the eye can see—and history, as you know is my business—everything conspires to show that a venial theft, especially of inglorious foodstuffs, such as bread crusts, ham, or cheese, unfailingly subjects its perpetrator to irreparable opprobrium, the categoric condemnation of the community, major punishment, automatic dishonor, and inexpiable shame, and this for two reasons, first because the perpetrator of such an offense is usually poor, which in itself connotes basic unworthiness, and secondly because his act implies, as it were, a tacit reproach to the community. A poor man’s theft is seen as a malicious attempt at individual redress . . . Where would we be? Note accordingly that in all countries the penalties for petty theft are extremely severe, not only as a means of defending society, but also as a stern admonition to the unfortunate to know their place, stick to their caste, and behave themselves, joyfully resigned to go on dying of hunger and misery down through the centuries forever and ever …

A man should be resigned to knowing himself a little better each day if he hasnt got the guts to put an end to his sniveling once and for all.

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.

Our life is a journey, through winter and night, We look for our way, in a sky without light. (Song of the Swiss Guards, 1793)

The mother was looking at nothing and listening to nothing but herself. “It’ll kill me, doctor! I’ll die of shame!” I made no attempt to dissuade her. I didn’t know what to do. We could see the father pacing back and forth in the little dining room next door. Apparently he hadn’t finished composing his attitude for the occasion. Maybe he was waiting for things to come to a head before selecting a posture. He was in a kind of limbo. 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.

I dont have to worry about Madame Ouche! shell still be robbing me blind when shes dead!...having made her last confession and received extreme unction...all the cataclysms will pass over her without harming a single gray hair on her head! its a paradise here for scum like her, on earth as there is in heaven...they dont really die, the sluts, the hussies, the really awful ones, they just go from one paradise to another, with their money, servants, cars...just buy their cute little ticket and off they go! final absolution and see you later! they shit in your hands!...theyre born to slip out of both hells - the one here and the one in the next world...all they do is fuck and whine...loads of cash! never broke!...cheers! heres to you! no regrets! you realize too late...

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 didnt believe in it anymore. We grow old so quickly and, whats 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 mold, and were 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, its too late to change. Youre a hundred-percent restless, and its set that way for good.

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.

In my room Id barely closed my eyes when the blonde from the movie house came along and sang her whole song of sorrow just for me. I helped her put me to sleep, so to speak, and succeeded pretty well... I wasnt entirely alone... Its not possible to sleep alone...

I have no ideas, myself! Not a one! theres nothing more vulgar, more common, more disgusting than ideas! libraries are loaded with them! and every sidewalk cafe!...the impotent are bloated with ideas!...they dazzle youth with ideas! they play the pimp!...and youth is ever ready, as you know, Professor, to gobble up anything, to go OOH! and AAH! by the numbers! How those pimps have an easy job of it! the passionate years of youth are spent getting a hard on and gargling ideeaas!...philosophies, if you prefer!...yes sir, philosophies! youth loves sham just as young dogs love those sticks, like bones, that we throw and they run after! they race forward, yipping away, wasting their time, thats the main thing!

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 shed done a good job in conceiving me. This alleged Providence was the great subterfuge of maternal thoughtlessness.

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. Its a novel, just a fictitious narrative. Littre says so and hes never wrong.And besides, in the first place, anyone can do as much. You just have to close your eyes.Its on the other side of life.

Id take cyanide no problem if it was that or throwing a cat out in the street, even a moth-eaten, mangy, caterwauling pain in the ass! Id rather have the thing in bed with me than see it suffer on my account...though when it comes to human beings, Im only interested in the sick...the ones who can stand up are nothing but mounds of vice and spite...I dont get mixed up in their schemes...

Here we are, alone again. Its all so slow, so heavy, so sad. . . Ill be old soon. Then at last it will be over. So many people have come into my room. Theyve talked. They havent said much. Theyve gone away. Theyve grown old, wretched, sluggish, each in some corner of the world.