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Advice
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Even diseases have lost their prestige, there aren't so many of them left. Think it over... no more syphilis, no more clap, no more typhoid... antibiotics have taken half the tragedy out of medicine.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Authors & Writing
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Man hardly comes in more than two varieties, wherever he is, whatever he does: workers and pimps ... they're either one or the other! ... and inventors, the worst kind of jobholder! ... they stand condemned! ... the writer who doesn't pimp along, peacefully plagiarizing, who doesn't pump out the pop stuff, he's had it! ... everybody hates him!
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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The novel can't compete with cars, the movies, television, and liquor. A guy who's had a good feed and tanked up on good wine gives his old lady a kiss after supper and his day is over. Finished.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Interview, June 1, 1960
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Boredom
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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...
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine, The narrator (Ferdinand Bardamu), in Journey to the End of the Night (tr. 1934; 1966 ed., p. 307), 1932
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Christianity
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With two thousand years of Christianity behind him... a man can't see a regiment of soldiers march past without going off the deep end. It starts off far too many ideas in his head.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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City Life, Cities
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From up high where I was, you could shout anything you liked at them. I tried. They made me sick, the whole lot of them. I hadn't the nerve to tell them so in the daytime, to their face, but up there it was safe. Help! Help! I shouted, just to see if it would have any effect on them. None whatsoever. Those people were pushing life and night and day in front of them. Life hides everything from people. Their own noise prevents them from hearing anything else. They couldn't care less. The bigger and taller the city, the less they care. Take it from me. I've tried. It's a waste of time.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine, Journey to the End of the Night, 1932
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Desires
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Almost every desire a poor man has is a punishable offence.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Experience
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Experience is a dim lamp, which only lights the one who bears it.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Forgiveness
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One can't relive one's life. Forgiveness is not what's difficult; one's always too ready to forgive. And it does no good, that's obvious.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Heroes/Heroism
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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.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Labor
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We've no use for intellectuals in this outfit. What we need is chimpanzees. Let me give you a word of advice: never say a word to us about being intelligent. We will think for you, my friend. Don't forget it.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Life
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Life is filigree work. What is written clearly is not worth much, it's the transparency that counts.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Love
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Love, Arthur, is a poodle's chance of attaining the infinite, and personally I have my pride.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Philosophy
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To philosophize is only another way of being afraid and leads hardly anywhere but to cowardly make-believe.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Poverty
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There's a point of poverty at which the spirit isn't with the body all the time. It finds the body really too unbearable. So it's almost as if you were talking to the soul itself. And a soul's not properly responsible.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Reality
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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!
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Sadness
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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.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Solitude
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The whole business of your life overwhelms you when you live alone. One's stupefied by it. To get rid of it you try to daub some of it off on to people who come to see you, and they hate that. To be alone trains one for death.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Trade (import / export)
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This instinctive repulsion which tradespeople inspire in men of sensitive feeling is one of the very rare consolations for being so impoverished which are given to those of us who don't sell anything to anybody.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Wealth
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When you're not used to comfort and good things to eat, you're intoxicated by them in no time. Truth's only too pleased to leave you. Very little is ever needed for Truth to let go of you. And after all, you're not really very keen to keep hold of it.
-Louis-Ferdinand Celine
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Books by and about Louis-Ferdinand Celine