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...

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

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

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Lovely sight, the Apocalypse! But absurdity, without limits? No Sir! There have to be certain limits...

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

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

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Not much music left inside us for life to dance to. Our youth has gone to the ends of the earth to die in the silence of the truth. And where, I ask you, can a man escape to, when he hasn't enough madness left inside him? The truth is an endless death agony. The truth is death. You have to choose: death or lies. I've never been able to kill myself.

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Now was the time to make quick tracks. Back to Foregone, retrace my steps? Try to explain my conduct and the circumstances of the present disaster? I hesitated. . . Not for long. Nothing can be explained. The world only knows how to do one thing, to roll over and kill you, as a sleeper kills his fleas. That would be a stupid way to die, I said to myself, to let myself be crushed like everybody else. To put your trust in men is to get yourself killed a little.

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

Of course the people in the metro didn't see a thing!...what a joke! Petrified rat lets! But they'll still come out to refute me! Make claims!...that nothing got bombed!...squished! Powdered! That the firmament was calm, and me, I imagined the whole thing! Chrysanthemums, sprays, roses! Why, there's no more any such thing as sky-hooking shrapnel than there is anal ice cream! It's all in my mind! Hallucinations and bullshit! What a crook! But I repeat and reassert! Shrapnel and fiery lace stretched from one end of the horizon to the other! With lots of glow-worms mixed in...and dancing purple fireflies...

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

One little second of pleasure, a whole life of pain...my mother knew nothing of the pleasures of a good roll in the hay...she missed out on all that...like me, her son...a lifetime of sacrifice!...the woman who can grunt and rave in the throes of a deep fuck can die happy...

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

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)

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline

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

— Louis-Ferdinand Céline