Patrick Suskind

robbing a living creature of its aromatic soul.

“I thank you,” he said softly, “I thank you, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, for being what you are!”

She no longer existed for him as a body, but only as a disembodied scent.

It was like living in Utopia.

It was like living in Utopia.

He had to have it, not simply in order to possess it, but for his heart to be at peace.

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. There is no remedy for it.

People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.

Grenouille, the solitary tick, the abomination, Grenouille the Monster, who had never felt love and would never be able to inspire it, stood there beside the city wall of Grasse on that day in March and loved and was profoundly happy in his love.

True, he did not love another human being, certainly not the girl who lived in the house beyond the wall. He loved her scent — that alone, nothing else, and only inasmuch as it would one day be his alone. He would bring it home within the year, he swore it by his very life.