Patrick Suskind > Quotes

“To think about it seemed to him as pointless as to think about what he would do after his own death: nothing, of course.”
― Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“For people could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. But they could not escape scent. For scent was a brother of breath. Together with breath it entered human beings, who could not defend themselves against it, not if they wanted to live. And scent entered into their very core, went directly to their hearts, and decided for good and all between affection and contempt, disgust and lust, love and hate. He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.”
― Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“He was not particular about it, he did not differentiate between what is commonly considered a good and a bad smell, not yet. He was greedy. The goal of the hunt was simply to possess everything the world could offer in the way of odors, and his only condition was that the odors be new ones. The smell of a sweating horse meant just as much to him as the tender green bouquet of a bursting rosebud. The acrid stench of a bug was no less worthy than the aroma rising from a larded veal roast in an aristocrats kitchen. he devoured everything, everything. Sucking it up into him.”
― Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“Until now he had thought that it was the world in general he wanted to squirm away from. But it was not the world, it was the people in it. You could live, so it seemed, in this world, in this world devoid of humanity.”
― Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“Un poder mayor que el poder del dinero o el poder del terror o el poder de la muerte; el insuperable poder de inspirar amor en los seres humanos.”
― Patrick Suskind, El perfume: historia de un asesino

“He drank in the aroma, he drowned in it, impregnating himself through his innermost pores, until he became wood himself; he lay on the cord of wood like a wooden puppet, like Pinocchio, as if dead, until after a long while, perhaps a half hour or more, he gagged up the word "wood.:”
― Patrick Suskind, Perfume

“A flesh-and-blood bishop was on his knees before him, whimpering with pleasure.”
― Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“We are familiar with people who seek out solitude: penitents, failures, saints, or prophets. They retreat to deserts, preferably, where they live on locusts and honey. Others, however, live in caves or cells on remote islands; some-more spectacularly-squat in cages mounted high atop poles swaying in the breeze. They do this to be nearer God. Their solitude is a self-moritification by which they do penance. They act in the belief that they are living a life pleasing to God. Or they wait months, years, for their solitude to be broken by some divine message that they hope then speedily to broadcast among mankind.
Grenouille's case was nothing of the sort. There was not the least notion of God in his head. He was not doing penance or wating for some supernatural inspiration. He had withdrawn solely for his own pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid. 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 lived in the wide world outside.”
― Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“He possessed the power. He held it in his hand. A power stronger than the power of money or the power of terror or the power of death: the invincible power to command the love of mankind. (Chapter 51, Part 4)”
― Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.”
― Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“And he spread his arms wide to receive the angels storming down upon him.”
― Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

“He had a tough constitution. Whoever has survived his own birth in a garbage can is not so easily shoved back out of this world again.”
― Patrick Suskind, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer