Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer Quotes
"His gifts and his sole ambition were restricted to a domain that leaves no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of scent."
"The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine."
"The whole of the aristocracy stank, even the King himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the Queen like an old goat."
"For the first time, it was not just that his greedy nature was offended, but his very heart ached."
"He had to understand its smallest detail, to follow it to its last delicate tendril."
"He knew for certain that unless he possessed this scent, his life would have no meaning."
"He wanted to press, to imprint his apotheosis of scent on his black, muddled soul."
"And now he smelled that this was a human being, smelled the sweat of her armpits, the oil in her hair, the fishy odour of her genitals, and smelled it all with the greatest pleasure."
"This scent was a blend of both, of evanescence and substance, not a blend, but a unity."
"He had the prescience of something extraordinary — this scent was the key for ordering all odours."
"He had found the compass for his future life."
"Man’s misfortune stems from the fact that he does not want to stay in the room where he belongs."
"The persuasive power of an odour cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs."
"Everything that Baldini produced was a success."
"He wanted to empty himself of his innermost being, of nothing less than his innermost being."
"He was not out to make his fortune with his art; he didn’t want to live from it if he could find another way to make a living."
"Grenouille had mastered not only the names of all the odours in Baldini’s laboratory, but he was also able to record the formulas for his perfumes on his own."
"For Grenouille, however, this knowledge was won painfully after a long chain of disappointing experiments."
"The second rule is: perfume lives in time; it has its youth, its maturity, and its old age."
"He could have gone ahead and died next year. But no! He was dying now, God damn it all, within forty-eight hours!"
"As if there were some danger that he could be infected or contaminated."
"He had become something that ought not to exist."
"With his whole heart would have to love him, Grenouille, the bearer of that scent."
"He knew that he could improve on this scent."
"He would be able to create a scent that was not merely human, but superhuman."
"He, Grenouille, who could smell other people miles away, was incapable of smelling his own odour."
"He felt a child against his knee, a little girl standing wedged in among the adults."
"His joy was boundless when he noticed that the others noticed nothing."
"He watched with great satisfaction the effect of a totally different fluid, a much more real one: his own."
"He was not out of his mind, which was so clear and buoyant."
"He did not want to create a great scent; he did not want to create a prestigious cologne."
"It was as if the place had been overrun and then retaken so often that it was weary of offering serious resistance to any future intruders — not out of weakness, but out of indolence, or maybe even out of a sense of its own strength."
"He pulled the flacon with his perfume from his pocket, dabbed himself lightly, and continued on his way."
"The scent floating out of the garden was the scent of the redheaded girl he had murdered that night."
"He knew that children did not have an exceptional scent, any more than green buds of flowers before they blossom."
"This child already had a scent so terrifyingly celestial that once it had unfolded its total glory, it would unleash a perfume such as the world had never smelled before."
"And because people are stupid and use their noses only for blowing, but believe absolutely anything they see with their eyes, they will say it is because this is a girl with beauty and grace and charm."
"And none of them will know that it is truly not how she looks that has captured them, nor her reputed unblemished external beauty, but solely her incomparable, splendid scent!"
"He wanted truly to possess the scent of this girl behind the wall; to peel it from her like skin and to make her scent his own."
"For he had renounced things all his life. But never once had he possessed and lost."
"The world was nothing but odour and the soft sound of surf from the sea."
"He loved this waiting. He had also loved it with the twenty-four other girls, for it was not a dull waiting-till-it’s-over, not even a yearning, expectant waiting, but an attendant, purposeful, in a certain sense active waiting."
"The most essential thing was happening. And even if he himself was doing nothing, it was happening through him nevertheless."
"He had never felt so fine in all his life, so peaceful, so steady, so whole and at one with himself."
"Feelings of humility and gratitude welled up within him. ‘I thank you,’ he said softly, ‘I thank you, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, for being what you are!’"
"The wind had died away. Everything was still. Nothing disturbed the peace."
"He smelled the peaceful sleep of the maid in the adjoining room, the deep contentment of Antoine Richis’s sleep on the other side of the corridor."
"It was he, just as in his narcissistic fantasies of old, but now in reality."
"For once in his life, he wanted to be apprehended in his true being."
"And at the same time, I’m the only one that it cannot enslave. I am the only person for whom it is meaningless."
"For the first time they had done something out of Love."