Olfactory Imagery Quotes

“You smell like ripe corn,
A wind-dropped smell”
― Jiban Narah,Anindita Kar

“It’s jasmine, an intoxicating single-note floral. I wave the blotter and sniff again, the memory coming to me not in bits and pieces but fully formed. When I was sixteen, my mother told me to re-create the jasmine she grew in the small garden behind the house in all its different moods. Jasmine in the rain. In the sun. Playing up the indoles for the pungent smell of mothballs, and then its green notes. I’d done dozens of jasmines, refining and learning each time. The one my mother had chosen for my birthday was a light and sweet interpretation, something suitable for a girl.
Luling22 makes me gasp out loud. It’s a rich, spicy bomb, not typical of my mother, who prefers soft fragrances designed to stay close to the skin and respect the olfactory space of those around the wearer. This is the opposite, an amber overdose with notes of opopanax, civet, and vanilla. It’s said when Giorgio Beverly Hills was released, it was so overpowering restaurants posted signs asking people to tone it down. Luling22 could give that, Angel, and Poison a run for their money. It’s the 1980’s in all its lavish excess, and it pulls a surprised laugh out of me. If it were a relationship, it would be the love-bombing of a narcissist.
The more of them I smell, the more I’m convinced my mother is trying to tell me something— but don’t know what. There’s a tea scent with a breath of buttery pastry that reminds me of Sunday mornings, a leather that smells like a supple old handbag, and a powdery rose I recall from one of Waipo’s old cosmetic compacts.
I sit with Luling28 for a while, as it’s a feat of technical brilliance that brings me an unusual feeling of envy. I knew Mom was good, but this good? She’s combined the ozone of an approaching storm in the top notes with the petrichor of the rain-soaked earth, giving the entire story of a summer shower, with an epilogue of fresh leaves trembling with rain. I don’t know how she made the green linger, when its volatility means it should be one of the first notes to disappear.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“I decide on the smell of night in the garden at my parents’ house. I put in black water and wet sand and rocks, then cover it with the butterscotch of a ponderosa pine. I consider adding an echo of Rafe’s cologne, that smoky light tobacco that’s nothing like a cigarette and instead is everything sexy. I find myself reaching for a pristine and chilly iris. Mom’s scent.
She’s writing away on one of the formula sheets. A discarded pair of gloves and a capped vial sit in front of her.
“How are you doing?” I ask.
In reply, she holds out the vial. I exchange it for my own and we dip in our blotters. It takes me a moment to absorb what my mother has done. It’s almost identical to my own, minus the iris. Instead— I close my eyes. Yes. She’s incorporated the Turkish rose note from the scent I wore in high school, a deconstructed version of a high-end perfume that I didn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars on, and over it, a breath of citrus. Waipo’s lemon.”
― L.C. Chu, The Library of Flowers

“SPAIN--- SOMETHING WONDERFUL:
The seduction of white flowers
Woodsmoke and saffron
Lavender mountains, cranberry sunsets
Blue domes
Lemon trees
Floating bridges
Immense night skies pricked with stars...”
― Kate Lord Brown, The Perfume Garden