Patrick Süskind

He was very suspicious of inventions, for they always meant that some rule would have to be broken.

Even knowing that to possess that scent he must pay the terrible price of losing it again, the very possession and the loss seemed to him more desirable than a prosaic renunciation of both. For he had renounced things all his life. But never once had he possessed and lost.

People could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. But they couldn't escape scent. For scent was a brother of breath.

He would be able to create a scent that was not merely human, but superhuman, an angel's scent.

He was in very truth his own God, and a more splendid God than the God that stank of incense and was quartered in churches.

Whatever came within his field of vision Jonathan coated with the vile patina of his hate.

If this one, most essential freedom was taken from you, the freedom, that is, to withdraw from other people when necessity called, then all other freedoms were worthless. Then life had no more meaning. Then it would be better to be dead.

The scheduled execution of one of the most abominable criminals of the age degenerated into the largest orgy the world had seen since the second century before Christ.

There were no mad flashings of the eye, no lunatic grimace passed over his face. ... He looked quite innocent, like any happy person.

People are stupid and use their noses only for blowing, but believe absolutely anything they see with their eyes.

No human being can go on living in the same house with a pigeon, a pigeon is the epitome of chaos and anarchy.

He had found his way to sphinxlike imperturbability.