Patrick Süskind Quotes

He had no use for sensual gratification, unless that gratification consisted of pure, incorporeal odors.

He had escaped the abhorrent taint! He was truly completely alone! He was the only human being in the world!

Grenouille no longer wanted to go somewhere, but only to go away, away from human beings.

He did not want to have his newfound respiratory freedom ruined so soon be the sultry climate of humans.

Their compacted human effluvium had oppressed him like air heavy with an imminent thunderstorm. Until now he had thought that it was the world in general he had wanted to squirm away from. But it was not the world, it was the people in it.

Naturally, the gnome had everything to do with it.

Odours have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions or will. The persuasive power of an odour cannot be fended off, it enters into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally.

Whatever the art or whatever the craft—and make a note of this before you go—talent means next to nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.

You're one of those people who know whether there is chervil or parsley in the soup at meal-time. That's fine, there's something to be said for that. But that doesn't make you a cook.

The river ... glittered now here, now there, moving ever closer, as if a giant hand were scattering millions of louis-d'or over the water. For a moment it seemed the direction of the river had changed: it was flowing toward Baldini, a shimmering flood of pure gold.

Constantly before his eyes now was a river flowing from him; and it was as if he himself and his house and the wealth he had accumulated over many decades were flowing away like the river, while he was too old and too weak to oppose the powerful current.

These Diderots and d'Alemberts and Voltaires and Rousseaus...finally managed to infect the whole society with their perfidious fidgets, with their sheer delight in discontent and their unwillingness to be satisfied with anything in this world, in short, with the boundless chaos that reigns inside their own heads!

Man's misfortune stems from the fact that he does not want to stay in the room where he belongs.

What had civilized man lost that he was looking for out there in jungles inhabited by Indians or Negroes?

He was very suspicious of inventions, for they always meant that some rule would have to be broken.