shadesofpaint’s Reviews > Perfume: The Story of a Murderer > Status Update

“ This scent was a blend of both, of evanescence and substance, not a blend, but a unity, although slight and frail as well, and yet solid and sustaining, like a piece of thin, shimmering silk, and yet again not like silk, but like pastry soaked in honeysweet milk-and try as he would he couldn’t fit those two together: milk and silk”

" This scent had a freshness, but not the freshness of limes or pomegranates, not the freshness of myrrh or cinnamon bark or curly mint or birch or camphor or pine needles, nor that of a May rain or a frosty wind or of well water… and at the same time it had warmth, but not as bergamot, cypress, or musk has, or jasmine or daffodils, not as rosewood has or iris… “

“ The odor came rolling down the rue de Seine like a ribbon, unmistakably clear, and yet as before very delicate and very fine. Grenouille felt his heart pounding, and he knew that it was not the exertion of running
that had set it pounding, but rather his excited helplessness in the presence of this scent. He tried to
recall something comparable, but had to discard all comparisons”