Patrick Süskind

Whatever came within his field of vision Jonathan coated with the vile patina of his hate.

He had found his way to sphinxlike imperturbability.

He was so full of disgust, disgust at the world and at himself, that he could not weep.

God stank. God was a poor little stinker.

The scheduled execution of one of the most abominable criminals of the age degenerated into the largest orgy the world had seen since the second century before Christ.

Naturally, the gnome had everything to do with it.

People are stupid and use their noses only for blowing, but believe absolutely anything they see with their eyes.

He decided in favor of life out of sheer spite and malice.

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

He would be able to create a scent that was not merely human, but superhuman, an angel's scent.

With one glance he had got himself trapped in the brown fundament of her eyes, he was in danger of sinking, as if into a soft, brown swamp, and had to close his eyes for a second to get out of it.

When they finally did dare it, at first with stolen glances and then candid ones, they had to smile. They were uncommonly proud. For the first time they had done something out of Love.

She was one of those languid women made of dark honey, smooth and sweet and terribly sticky, who take control of a room with a syrupy gesture, a toss of the hair, a single slow whiplash of the eyes—and all the while remain as still as the center of a hurricane, apparently unaware of the force of gravity by which they irresistibly attract to themselves the yearnings and the souls of both men and women.

Virtually drowning in himself, he could not for the life of him smell himself!

The rivers stank, the marketplaces stank, the churches stank, it stank beneath the bridges and in the palaces. The peasant stank as did the priest, the apprentice as did his master’s wife, the whole of the aristocracy stank, even the king himself stank, stank like a rank lion, and the queen like an old goat, summer and winter.