Perfume

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.

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

When they finally did dare it, at first with stolen glances and then candid ones, they had to smile. They were uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love.

Suddenly he knew that he had never found gratification in love, but always only in hatred—in hating and in being hated.

He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting. People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.

You're one of those people who know whether there is chervil or parsley in the soup at meal-time. That's fine, there's something to be said for that. But that doesn't make you a cook.

Odours have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions or will. The persuasive power of an odour cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally.

Constantly before his eyes now was a river flowing from him; and it was as if he himself and his house and the wealth he had accumulated over many decades were flowing away like the river, while he was too old and too weak to oppose the powerful current.

Whoever has survived his own birth on a rubbish heap is not so easily shoved back out of this world again.

All these grotesque incongruities between the richness of the world perceivable by smell and the poverty of language were enough for the lad Grenouille to doubt that language made any sense at all.

He decided in favor of life out of sheer spite and malice.

He had escaped the abhorrent taint! He was truly completely alone! He was the only human being in the world!

Grenouille no longer wanted to go somewhere, but only to go away, away from human beings.

Whatever the art or whatever the craft—and make a note of this before you go—talent means next to nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.

The wind blew cold, and he was freezing, but he did not notice that he was freezing, for within him was a counter-frost, fear.