The Scent Keeper Quotes
"Growing up in the midst of the rain and moss and ancient thick-barked trees, it was easy to forget that the vast majority of our island was underwater."
"But my father was my world, in a way so literal it can still grab my thoughts, pick them up, and toss them around like driftwood in a storm."
"The beauty there was raw; it could kill as easily as it could astonish."
"I remember the way the rain seemed to talk to the roof as I fell asleep, and how the fire would snap and tell it to be quiet."
"I inhaled, and fell into the fragrance like Alice down the rabbit hole."
"Every day I was out of my loft at dawn, determined to find every smell I could."
"Foragers feast, my father would say, and we’d set out into the woods, cedar bark baskets in our hands."
"Once upon a time, Emmeline, he began, Jack found himself in an enchanted forest where the trees were as tall as the sky."
"There was no problem with celebrating more than once, he said, although I only got to count the first one for my age."
"I knew the woods were real, of course, but for me, living on an island with only my father, the image of two children holding hands was no less extraordinary than the idea of spinning straw into gold."
"The bear had taken more than Cleo, more than our ability to make it through the winter. It had ripped the fabric of what made us two and now we were not even one plus one."
"I had always thought other people were simply smaller or taller or rounder versions of him."
"All I knew was that if mermaids didn’t exist, then everything else must be up for grabs, too."
"When you change a scent, you change the memory."
"Grief makes a tunnel of our lives, and it is all too easy to lose sight of the other people in the darkness with us."
"Follow this. His finger tapping my nose. Follow this."
"No one has ever turned down one of my rolls."
"It’s hard to explain my shock at seeing a real, female human being for the first time."
"I had read fairy tales about houses made of candy, and animals that could talk. Our walls had been filled with bottles that held time."
"I could feel my breath warming the trunk, surrounding my face."
"I carried the scent of sap with me on my fingertips."
"Spring is here, they said, in stark contradiction to the weather outside."
"My father was a scientist, he hated winter and loved smells."
"In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different."
"Nothing can be always. That's the first thing a smell teaches you."
"We all just go along, catching glimpses of one another, thinking we know everything."
"I could smell our scents reaching out toward each other, searching, slipping underneath our words."
"The longer I was in that house, the more I became like him."
"What I remembered was how it felt to be held in his arms. To be loved that way."
"People want their bodies to smell like oceans they'll never have time to visit."
"In the end, I don’t think I’ve ever met two people with more restless minds, or a stronger fear of being deserted."
"Nobody wants the real story, Emmeline. Nobody. I did what I did for you."
"You’d think I’d remember, but I didn’t. What I remembered was how it felt to be held in his arms. To be loved that way, before everything else happened."