196 Quotes by Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Readers, friends, less than friends, enemies, Critics! Here I am at it again with Book I of Guignol! Don't judge me too soon! Wait awhile for what's to follow! Book II! Book III! it all clears up! develops, straightens out! As is, ¾ of it's missing! Is that a way to do things? It had to be printed fast because with things as they are you don't know who's living or dead!

Here's the truth, simply stated...bookstores are suffering from a serious crisis of falling sales. Don't believe a single zero of all those editions claimed to be 100,000! 40,000!...even 400 copies! just for the suckers! Alack!...Alas!...only love and romance...and even then!...manage to keep selling...and a few murder mysteries...

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!

...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!

I do not like war, because war happens in the countryside, and the countryside bores me.

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!

Interrupted again! if it's not Jules it's the cat! that's the female speciality: interruptions!

The soul is the body’s vanity and pleasure as long as the body’s in good health, but it’s also the urge to escape from the body as soon as the body is sick or things go badly.

Whether you're making love to the ladies or postulating the infinite, you'll still get all flabby one day!