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Perfume: The Story of a Murderer Quotes
He was a master in the art of spreading boredom and playing the clumsy fool-though never so egregiously that people might enjoy making fun of him or use him as the butt of some crude practical joke inside the guild. He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting. People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
He would be able to create a scent that was not merely human, but super human, an angels scent, so indescribably good and vital that who ever smelt it would be enchanted and with his whole heart would have to love him.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
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.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
Moonlight knew no colors and traced the contours of the terrain only very softly. It covered the land a dirty gray, strangling life all night long. This world molded in lead, where nothing moved but the wind that fell sometimes like a shadow over the gray forests, and where nothing lived but the scent of the naked earth, was the only world he accepted, for it was much like the world of his soul.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
…in that moment, as he saw and smelled how irresistible its effect was and how with lightning speed it spread and made captives of the people all around him—in that moment his whole disgust for humankind rose up again within him and completely soured his triumph, so that he felt not only no joy, but not even the least bit of satisfaction. What he had always longed for—that other people should love him—became at the moment of his achievement unbearable, because he did not love them himself, he hated them. And suddenly he knew that he had never found gratification in love, but always only in hatred—in hating and in being hated.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
As he took possession of it, he was overcome by a sense of something like sacred awe. He carefully spread his horse blanket on the ground as if dressing an altar and lay down on it. He felt blessedly wonderful. He was lying a hundred and fifty feet below the earth, inside the loneliest mountain in France – as if in his own grave. Never in his life had he felt so secure, certainly not in his mother’s belly. The world could go up on flames out there, but he would not even notice it here. He even began to cry softly. He did not know who to thank for such good fortune.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
He had escaped the abhorrent taint! He was truly completely alone! He was the only human being in the world!
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting. People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
For here, inside the crypt, was where he truly lived. Which is to say, for well over twenty hours a day in total darkness and in total silence and in total immobility, he sat on his horse blanket at the end of the stony corridor, his back resting on the rock slide, his shoulders wedged between the rocks and enjoyed himself.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusty reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened and he entered. The next performance in the theater of Grenouille’s soul was beginning.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
…talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
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.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
The smell of the sea pleased him so much that he wanted one day to take it in, pure and unadulterated, in such quantities that he could get drunk on it. And later, when he learned from stories how large the sea is and that you can sail upon it in ships for days on end without ever seeing land, nothing pleased him more than the image of himself sitting high up in the crow’s nest of the foremost mast on such a ship, gliding on through the endless smell of the sea — which really was no smell, but a breath, an exhilaration of breath, the end of all smells — dissolving with pleasure in that breath.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
He lay in his stony crypt like his own corpse, hardly breathing, his heart hardly beating – and yet lived as intensively and dissolutely as ever a rake had lived in the wide world outside.
— Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
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