Quotes from Patrick Süskind

...he came to the conclusion that you cannot depend on people, and that you can live in peace only if you keep them at arm's length.

He realized that all his life he had been a nobody to everyone. What he now felt was the fear of his own oblivion. It was as though he did not exist.

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

He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.

He was not bound. No one led him by the arm. He got out of the carriage as if he were a free man.

She was indeed a girl of exquisite beauty. She was one of those languid women made of dark honey smooth and sweet and terribly sticky.

There comes a time in every man's life when he needs his own toilet.

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

She was indeed a girl of exquisite beauty. 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.

He would be able to create a scent that was not merely human, but super human, an angels scent, so indescribably good and vital that who ever smelt it would be enchanted and with his whole heart would have to love him.

if you could not close a door behind you to take a shit in the city - even if it was just the door to a shared toilet - if this one, most essential freedom was taken away from you, the freedom, that is, to withdraw from other people when necessity called, then all other freedoms were worthless. Then life had no more meaning. Then it would be better to be dead.

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 centre of a hurricane, apparently unaware of the force of gravity by which they irresistibly attract themselves the yearnings and the souls of both men and women.

He was not bound. No one led him by the arm. He got out of the carriage as if he were a free man.

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

And even knowing that to possess that scent he must pay the terrible price of losing it again, the very possession and the loss seemed to him more desirable than a prosaic renunciation of both. For he had renounced things all his life. But never once had he possessed and lost.

And finally - he was neither able nor willing to prevent it - the self-loathing dammed up inside him spilled over and gushed out, gushed out of glaring eyes that grew ever grimmer, angrier, beneath the rim of his cap, flooding the outside world as perfect, vulgar hate.

He had used only a drop of his perfume for his performance in Grasse. There was enough left to enslave the whole world. If he wanted, he could be feted in Paris, not by tens of thousands, but by hundreds of thousands of people; or could walk out to Versailles and have the King kiss his feet; write the Pope a perfumed letter and reveal himself as the new Messiah; be anointed in Notre-Dame as Supreme Emperor before kings, or even as God come to earth.

She had a face so charming that visitors of all ages and both sexes would stand stockstill at the sight of her, unable to pull their eyes away, practically licking that face with their eyes, the way tongues work at ice cream, with that typically stupid, single--minded expression on their faces that goes with concentrated licking

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

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.

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 he had to close his own eyes for a second to get out of it..

And the awful thing was that Grenouille, although he knew that this odour was his odour, could not smell it. 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.

And now fear spread over the countryside. People no longer knew against whom to direct their impotent rage.