angeles

“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

“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

“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 even 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 exhalation of breath, the end of all smells - dissolving with pleasure in that breath.”
― Suskind Patrick, 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