“I clearly see you a tapeworm, but not a cobra, not a cobra at all…no good at the flute! (…) I’ll go applaud you when you finally become a true monster, when you’ll have paid them, the witches, what you have to, their price, so they transmute you, blossom you, into a true phenomenon. Into a tapeworm that plays the flute.”

— Louis-ferdinand Céline

To the Fidgeting Lunatic
in Albert Paraz, Le Gala des Vaches, Éditions de l’Élan, Paris, 1948 ; À l'agité du bocal, et autres textes de L.-F. Céline, l'Herne / Carnets de l'Herne ISBN 9782851976567 2006, 85 p. ; To the Fidgeting Lunatic (Céline on Sartre), translation by Constantin Rigas.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I clearly see you a tapeworm, but not a cobra, not a cobra at all…no good at the flute! (…) I’ll go applaud you when yo…" by Louis-ferdinand Céline?

Louis-ferdinand Céline photo

Louis-ferdinand Céline88

French writer 1894–1961

Related quotes

“What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

“Teach him how you will, a pig will never play the flute.”

Robert Jordan (1948–2007) American writer

Thom Merrilin
(15 January 1990)

“I think the purpose of the actor is to illuminate the human condition. When you go to a film and you see a good actor, it's because you identify with them—you know what they're feeling—and a good actor draws, I believe, from their own experience. And when it's true for him, it's true for you. If a director imposes a performance or you try to mimic somebody, it can be funny or brilliant, but it isn't moving.”

Shelley Winters (1920–2006) actress

On acting, interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lWftZbSG-lY with Skip E. Lowe (1989)

“You see, when you're middle class, you have to live with the fact that history will ignore you. You have to live with the fact that history can never champion your causes and that history will never feel sorry for you. It is the price that is paid for day-to-day comfort and silence. And because of this price, all happinesses are sterile; all sadnesses go unpitied.”

Douglas Coupland (1961) Canadian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and graphic designer

Generation X (1991)

“If melodiously piping flutes sprang from the olive, would you doubt that a knowledge of flute-playing resided in the olive? And what if plane trees bore harps which gave forth rhythmical sounds? Clearly you would think in the same way that the art of music was possessed by plane trees. Why, then, seeing that the universe gives birth to beings that are animate and wise, should it not be considered animate and wise itself?”

Zeno of Citium (-334–-263 BC) ancient Greek philosopher

As quoted in De Natura Deorum by Cicero, ii. 8.

““I was afraid you wouldn’t take me seriously.”
“I did. But I am preparing,” the duke said, “to revise that opinion. Stop playing and tell me what you want.”
“And you’ll give it to me?”
“What do you think? If it’s reasonable, I’ll consider it. If it’s not, I have the resources to annoy you very much as you’ve been annoying me. It’s true I have more scruples—but I’m willing to suspend them. I also have more money, you see—lots more money. I wasn’t planning to waste any of it on you, but I could be convinced to change my mind.””

Ellen Kushner book The Privilege of the Sword

Part IV, Chapter VI (p. 404)
The Privilege of the Sword (2006)

“When you have only two minutes to say good-bye to the person you love most in the world, and you don’t know when you’ll see each other again, you can become logjammed with the effort to say and do and settle everything at once.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

Source: Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage

“Life here [in Paris, 1885] is quite different. You hardly ever see a dog on a lead; you come across little wagons being pulled by dogs that are often so small that you can't imagine how on earth they manage to shift such enormous weights. You see shepherdesses in the middle of the street herding goats and sometimes playing on their flutes. I think I'll go to the Louvre and the Salon today.”

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) Norwegian painter and printmaker

1880 - 1895

“Say you’ll marry me when I come back or, before God, I won’t go. I’ll stay around here and play a guitar under your window every night and sing at the top of my voice and compromise you, so you’ll have to marry me to save your reputation.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

“Funny, when you finally faced reality, it was amazing how clearly you could see things.”

Mary Higgins Clark book Loves Music, Loves to Dance

Source: Loves Music, Loves to Dance

Related topics