# Quote — Frank Herbert, God Emperor of Dune

> I am the most ardent people-watcher who ever lived. I watch them inside me and outside. Past and present can mingle with odd impositions in me. And as the metamorphosis continues in my flesh wonderful things happen to my senses. It's as though I sensed everything close-up. I have extremely acute hearing and vision, plus a sense of smell extraordinarily discriminating. I can detect and identify pheromones at three parts per million. I know. I have tested it. You cannot hide very much from my senses. I think it would horrify you what I can detect by smell alone. Your pheromones tell me what you are doing or are prepared to do. And gesture and posture! I stared for half a day once at an old man sitting on a bench in Arrakeen. He was a fifth-generation descendant of Stilgar the Naib and did not even know it.

- Author: [Frank Herbert](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert.md)
- Book: [God Emperor of Dune](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Dune#God_Emperor_of_Dune_(1981)) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/i-am-the

## More from this book

> The defiling of a god is an ancient human tradition. Why should I be an exception?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/the-defiling-of-a-god.md)

> Odd as it may seem, great struggles such as the one you can see emerging from my journals are not always visible to the participants. Much depends on what people dream in the secrecy of their hearts. I have always been as concerned with the shaping of dreams as with the shaping of actions. Between the lines of my journals is the struggle with humankind's view of itself — a sweaty contest on a field where motives from our darkest past can well up out of an unconscious reservoir and become events with which we not only must live but contend. It is the hydra-headed monster which always attacks from your blind side. I pray, therefore, that when you have traversed my portion of the Golden Path you no longer will be innocent children dancing to music you cannot hear.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/odd-as-it-may.md)

> It is difficult to live in the present, pointless to live in the future and impossible to live in the past.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/frank-herbert/god-emperor-of-dune/it-is-difficult.md)