Joseph Hoff

“Sitting on nails and pulling like mad. And what do we get for it? Nothing! Thrashings and misery, hard words and hard knocks. We’re workers, they say. Work, they call it! That’s the crummiest part of the whole business. We’re down in the hold, heaving and panting, stinking and sweating our balls off, and meanwhile! Up on deck in the fresh air, what do you see?! Our masters having a fine time with beautiful pink and perfumed women on their laps. They send for us, we’re brought up on deck. They put on their top hats and give us a big spiel like as follows: “You no-good swine! We’re at war! Those stinkers in Country No. 2! We’re going to board them and cut their livers out! Let’s go! Let’s go! We’ve got everything we need on board! All together now! Let’s hear you shout so the deck trembles: ‘Long live Country No. 1!’ So you’ll be heard for miles around. The man that shouts the loudest will get a medal and a lollipop! Let’s go! And if there’s anybody that doesn’t want to be killed on the sea, he can go and get killed on land, it’s even quicker!”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night

“I caught on that being older is good for the mind. It puts sense into you.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night

“It’s easy to speak of betrayal. But to betray somebody you need an opportunity, and once you have it you’ve got to take it. It’s like opening a window in jail. Everybody would like to, but you don’t often get the chance.”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night

“The rich don’t have to kill to eat. They “employ” people, as they call it. The rich don’t do evil themselves. They pay. People do all they can to please them, and everybody’s happy. They have beautiful women, the poor have ugly ones. Clothing aside, they’re the product of centuries. Easy to look at, well fed, well washed. After all these years, life can boast no greater accomplishment. It’s no use trying, we slide, we skid, we fall back into the alcohol that preserves the living and the dead, we get nowhere. It’s been proved. After all these centuries of watching our domestic animals coming into the world, laboring and dying before our eyes without anything more unusual ever happening to them either than taking up the same insipid fiasco where so many other animals had left off, we should have caught on. Endless waves of useless beings keep rising from deep down in the ages to die in front of our noses, and yet here we stay, hoping for something …”
― Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night