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Famous Louis-Ferdinand Céline Quotes

“With hardly a thought of what he was doing, he had consented to years of torture, to the crushing of his life in this torrid monotony for the sake of a little girl to whom he was vaguely related. Motivated by nothing but his good heart, he had set no conditions and asked nothing in return. To that little girl far away he was giving enough tenderness to make the whole world over, and he never showed it. Suddenly he fell asleep in the candlelight. After a while I got up to look at his face. He slept like everybody else. He looked quite ordinary. There ought to be some mark by which to distinguish good people from bad.”

“Junk is fragile. I ruined tons of stuff, never on purpose. The thought of antiques still makes me sick, but that was our bread and butter. The scrapings of time are sad. . . lousy, sickening. We sold the stuff over the customer's dead body. We'd wear him down. We'd drown his wits in floods of hokum. . . incredible bargains. . . we were merciless. . . He couldn't win. . . If he had any wits to begin with, we demolished them. . . He'd walk out stunned with the Louis XIII cup in his pocket, the openwork fan with cat and shepherdess wrapped in tissue paper. You can't imagine how they revolted me, grown-ups taking such crap home with them.”