Louis-Ferdinand Celine Quotes

I feel monotony and death to be almost the same.

The flesh, alas, is sad, and I have read all the books.

We do not pray for immortality, but only not to see our acts and all things stripped suddenly of all their meaning; for then it is the utter emptiness of everything reveals itself.

Do we fear suffering or apathy most? Is it from experience or the monotony of a commonplace existence that we quickest flee?

I nudged myself closer to the ledge and closed my eyes and thought 'Oh what a life this is, why do we have to be born in the first place, and only so we can have our poor gentle flesh laid out to such impossible horrors as huge mountains and rock and empty space,' and with horror I remembered the famous Zen saying, 'When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing.' The saying made my hair stand on end; it had been such cute poetry sitting on Alvah's straw mats.

The war between being and nothingness is the underlying illness of the twentieth century. Boredom slays more of existence than war.

For I have known them all already, known them all— Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, I have measured out my life with coffee spoons.

It is best not to have been born at all: but, if born, as quickly as possible to return whence one came.

Evil is license, and that is why it is monotonous: everything has to be drawn from ourselves. One is condemned to false infinity. That is hell itself.

Nihilism is not only despair and negation, but above all the desire to despair and to negate.

In the end, it was the Sunday afternoons he couldn't cope with, and that terrible listlessness that starts to set in about 2:55, when you know you've taken all the baths that you can usefully take that day, that however hard you stare at any given paragraph in the newspaper you will never actually read it, or use the revolutionary new pruning technique it describes, and that as you stare at the clock the hands will move relentlessly on to four o'clock, and you will enter the long dark teatime of the soul.

The doctrine of the utter vanity of life is a doctrine of despair, and life is hope.

There is something more terrible than a hell of suffering--a hell of boredom.

The inexorable boredom that is at the core of life.

I have often thought that when I do die it will be of sheer boredom.

Boredom slays more of existence than war.

The only absolute knowledge attainable by man is that life is meaningless.

The only horrible thing in the world is ennui.

I am terrified of being bored.

Life is a hideous thing.

Nihilism is best done by professionals.

I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me . . . To do things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor Day, Mother's Day . . . was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep.

What annoys a person who suicides? The life itself. Boredom. Tiredness that descends on every morning when you look at yourself at the mirror.

Symmetry is ennui, and ennui is the very essence of grief and melancholy. Despair yawns.

Meaning is malleable: take it out, you get nihilism and despair. Put it in, you get sacredness and something most special.