Patrick Suskind Quotes

There were no mad flashings of the eye, no lunatic grimace passed over his face. He was not out of his mind, which was so clear and buoyant that he asked himself why he wanted to do it at all. And he said to himself that he wanted to do it because he was evil, thoroughly evil. And he smiled as he said it and was content. He looked quite innocent, like any happy person. ~ Patrick Suskind

From his youth on , he had been accustomed to people's passing him and taking no notice of him whatever , not out contempt -as hehad once believed - But because they were quite unaware of his existence. There was no space surrounding him, no waves broke from him into the atmosphere, as with other people; he had no shadow, so to speak, to cast across another's face. Only if he ran right into someone in a crowd or in a street-corner collision would there be a brief moment of discernment; and th person en countered would bounce off and stare at him for a few seconds as if gazing at a creature that ought not even exist, a creature that, although undeniably there, in some way or other was not present- and would take to his heels and have forgotten him, Grenouille, a moment later ....... ~ Patrick Suskind

Virtually drowning in himself, he could not for the life of him smell himself. ~ Patrick Suskind

But he did decide vegetatively, as a bean when once tossed aside must decide if it ought to germinate or had better let things be. ~ Patrick Suskind

This perfume was not like any perfume known before. It was not a scent that made things smell better ... it was completely new, capable of creating a whole world, a magical, rich world, and in an instant you forgot all the loathsomeness around you and felt so rich, so at ease, so free, so fine ... ~ Patrick Suskind

On the other hand, everyday language soon would prove inadequate for designating all the olfactory notions that he had accumulated within himself. Soon he was no longer smelling mere wood, but kinds of wood: maple wood, oak wood, pinewood, elm wood, pearwood, old, young, rotting, moldering, mossy wood, down to single logs, chips, and splinters. ~ Patrick Suskind

Besides which, he was a man who did not let his decisions be made for him by other people, not by a crowd thrown into panic, and certainly not by some anonymous piece of criminal trash. ~ Patrick Suskind

The odour of humans is always a fleshly odour – that is, a sinful odour. ~ Patrick Suskind

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. ~ Patrick Suskind

No human being can go on living in the same house with a pigeon, a pigeon is the epitomy of chaos and anarchy, a pigeon that whizzes around unpredictably, that sets it's claws in you, picks at your eyes.. ~ Patrick Suskind

Bathed in sweat and trembling with agitation, no,
not with agitation, but with fear, for he finally admitted it to himself: it was naked fear
that had seized him, and in admitting it he grew calmer and his thoughts clearer ~ Patrick Suskind

And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusty reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened and he entered. The next performance in the theater of Grenouille's soul was beginning. ~ Patrick Suskind

He looks as if he were three or four; looks just like one of those unapproachable, incomprehensible, willful little prehuman creatures, who in their ostensible innocence think only of themselves, who want to subordinate the whole world to their despotic will, and would do it, too, if one let them pursue their megalomaniacal ways and did not apply the strictest pedagogical principles to guide them to a disciplined, self-controlled, fully human existence. ~ Patrick Suskind

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. ~ Patrick Suskind

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

These were virtuoso odours, executed as wonderful little trifles that of course no one but he could admire or would ever take note of. He was enchanted by their meaningless perfection; and at no time in his life, either before or after, were there moments of such truly innocent happiness as in those days when he playfully and eagerly set about creating fragrant landscapes, still lifes and studies of individual objects. ~ Patrick Suskind

As he began to withdraw from them, it became clear to Grenouille for the first time that for eighteen years 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. You could live, so it seemed, in this world, in this world devoid of humanity. On ~ Patrick Suskind

For here, inside the crypt, was where he truly lived. Which is to say, for well over twenty hours a day in total darkness and in total silence and in total immobility, he sat on his horse blanket at the end of the stony corridor, his back resting on the rock slide, his shoulders wedged between the rocks and enjoyed himself. ~ Patrick Suskind

If we want to discuss love, which after all we believe is something very special, it is not much help for someone to explain that it represents a universal basic principle governing the tides and the digestive system alike. He might as well tell us that death is a thermodynamic phenomenon affecting both the amoeba and a black hole in the constellation of Pegasus - and he would still have told us nothing. ~ Patrick Suskind

As he took possession of it, he was overcome by a sense of something like sacred awe. He carefully spread his horse blanket on the ground as if dressing an altar and lay down on it. He felt blessedly wonderful. He was lying a hundred and fifty feet below the earth, inside the loneliest mountain in France - as if in his own grave. Never in his life had he felt so secure, certainly not in his mother's belly. The world could go up on flames out there, but he would not even notice it here. He even began to cry softly. He did not know who to thank for such good fortune. ~ Patrick Suskind

He had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent. ~ Patrick Suskind

But the human body is tough and not easily dismembered, even horses have great difficulty accomplishing it. ~ Patrick Suskind

How quickly the apparently solidly laid foundation of one's existence could crumble. ~ Patrick Suskind

He possessed the power. He held it in his hand. A power stronger than the power of money or the power of terror or the power of death: the invincible power to command the love of mankind. There was only one thing that power could not do: it could not make him able to smell himself. ~ Patrick Suskind

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

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

Pride and overexuberance led to last-minute mistakes, it was always happening in fairy-tales, the heroes wrecked the happiness they thought was securely in their grasp! ~ Patrick Suskind

It was good, really, that this external world still existed, if only as a place of refuge. ~ Patrick Suskind

and Grenouille's mother, who was still a young woman, barely in her mid-twenties, and who still was quite pretty and had almost all her teeth in her mouth and some hair on her head and – except for gout and syphilis and a touch of consumption – suffered from no serious disease, who still hoped to live a while yet, perhaps a good five or ten years, and perhaps even to marry one day and as the honorable wife of a widower with a trade or some such to bear real children... Grenouille's mother wished that it were already over. ~ Patrick Suskind

We are familiar with people who seek out solitude: penitents, failures, saints, or prophets. They retreat to deserts, preferably, where they live on locusts and honey. Others, however, live in caves or cells on remote islands; some-more spectacularly-squat in cages mounted high atop poles swaying in the breeze. They do this to be nearer God. Their solitude is a self-moritification by which they do penance. They act in the belief that they are living a life pleasing to God. Or they wait months, years, for their solitude to be broken by some divine message that they hope then speedily to broadcast among mankind. ~ Patrick Suskind

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. ~ Patrick Suskind

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. ~ Patrick Suskind

How Miserable this God smelled! How ridiculously bad the scent that this God let spill from Him. It was not even genuine frankincense fuming out of those thuribles. A bad substitute, adulterated with linden and cinnamon dust and saltpeter. God stank. God was a poor little stinker. He had been swindled, this God had, or was Himself a swindler, no different from Grenouille-only a considerably worse one! ~ Patrick Suskind

He had to hold his body very still, very still, like some vessel about to slosh over from too much motion. Gradually he managed to get control of his breathing. His excited heart beat more steadily; the pounding of the waves inside him subsided slowly. And suddenly solitude fell across his heart like a dusky reflection. He closed his eyes. The dark doors within him opened, and he entered. The next performance in the theatre of his soul was beginning. ~ Patrick Suskind

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. ~ Patrick Suskind

And he wallowed in disgust and loathing, and his hair stood on end at the delicious horror. ~ Patrick Suskind

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

What he coveted was the odor of certain human beings: that is, those rare humans who inspire love. These were his victims. ~ Patrick Suskind

He had a mighty urge to pull out his pistol and let loose in every directon, right into the coffeehouse, smack through it's glass windows, till there was nothing but crashing and tinkling, right into the middle of the ruck of cars or simply into the middle of one of the gigantic buildings across the way, those ugly, tall, menacing buildings, or into the air, straight up, into the heavens, yes, into the hot sky, into the horrible, oppressive, vaporous, pigeon blue-grey sky, bursting it, sending the leaden lid crashing with one shot, smashing down and pulverizing everything and burying it all, all of it, the whole miserable, dreary, loud, stinking world ... ~ Patrick Suskind

Talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything. ~ Patrick Suskind

... in that moment, as he saw and smelled how irresistible its effect was and how with lightning speed it spread and made captives of the people all around him - in that moment his whole disgust for humankind rose up again within him and completely soured his triumph, so that he felt not only no joy, but not even the least bit of satisfaction. What he had always longed for - that other people should love him - became at the moment of his achievement unbearable, because he did not love them himself, he hated them. And suddenly he knew that he had never found gratification in love, but always only in hatred - in hating and in being hated. ~ Patrick Suskind

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. ~ Patrick Suskind

For people could close their eyes to greatness, to horrors, to beauty, and their ears to melodies or deceiving words. But they couldn't escape scent. For scent was a brother of breath. Together with breath it entered human beings, who couldn't defend themselves against it, not if they wanted to live. And scent entered into their very core, went directly to their hearts, and decided for good and all between affection and contempt, disgust and lust, love and hate. He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men. ~ Patrick Suskind

Grenouille's mother, however, perceived the odor neither of the fish nor of the corpses, for her sense of smell had been utterly dulled, besides which her belly hurt, and the pain deadened all susceptibility of sensate impressions. ~ Patrick Suskind

Whenever he met him or saw him sitting somewhere - he felt only the sentiment that is generally termed tolerance: a very lukewarm emotional stew of disgust, contempt, and sympathy. ~ Patrick Suskind

He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting. People left him alone. And that was all he wanted. ~ Patrick Suskind

The mountain consisted of a giant cone of blue-gray rock and was surrounded by an endless, barren highland studded with a few trees charred by fire and overgrown with gray moss and gray brush, out of which here and there brown boulders jutted up like rotten teeth. Even by light of day, the region was so dismal and dreary that the poorest shepherd in this poverty-stricken province would not have driven his animals here. And by night, by the bleaching light of the moon, it was such a godforsaken wilderness that it seemed not of this world. ~ Patrick Suskind

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. ~ Patrick Suskind

He no longer yearned for his life in the cave. He had experienced that life once and it had proved unlivable. Just as had his other experience - life among human beings. He was suffocated by both worlds. He no longer wanted to live at all. ~ Patrick Suskind

Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions, or will. The persuasive power of an odor 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. ~ Patrick Suskind

...ever farther from human beings, driving him on ever more insistently toward the magnetic pole of the greatest possible solitude. ~ Patrick Suskind

For he was not fond of events, and hated outright those that rattled his inner equilibrium and made a muddle of the external arrangements of life. ~ Patrick Suskind

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

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, not 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 ... 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 honey-sweet milk - and try as he would he couldn't fit those two together: milk and silk! This scent was inconceivable, indescribable, could not be categorized in any way - it really ought not to exist at all. And yet there it was as plain and splendid as day. ~ Patrick Suskind

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. ~ Patrick Suskind

He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid. ~ Patrick Suskind

Mrs. Porter was fat, and her breath smelled like burnt newspapers. ~ Patrick Suskind

Abandoned the weapon because of its propensity to shatter the shoulders of the men pulling its trigger, but in Patrick Harper the seven-barreled gun had found a soldier capable of taming its brute ferocity. The gun was a cluster of seven half-inch barrels which were fired by a single lock, and was, in its effect, like a small cannon loaded with grapeshot. ~ Bernard Cornwell

While it sounds interesting, it was really only a headache pressed between covers. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

A leader's first priority is to create an environment where others can do these things and that cannot happen if they are not having effective meetings. ~ Patrick Lencioni

Things are more easily seen from edges. Danger rouses the sleeping mind. It makes some things clear. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Ripping the Band-Aid off quickly" is ~ Patrick Lencioni

You heard what the little filth said to me," Ury growled. "He'll be trouble. I say trench him now."

The other man spoke, his voice low and even. "I heard him, Ury. His mind is quick, and his Greek is good." He knelt down beside my head. "Your choice, boy. Decide now. ~ Patrick Bowman

Ken always says that his job is to create the best team possible, not to shepherd the careers of individual athletes. ~ Patrick Lencioni

Something happens between a novel and its reader which is similar to the process of developing photographs, the way they did it before the digital age. The photograph, as it was printed in the darkroom, became visible bit by bit. As you read your way through a novel, the same chemical process takes place. ~ Patrick Modiano

It looks like I have a thing for dangerous sports, don't I? ~ Danica Patrick

DAN
What do you want?
ALICE
To be loved.
DAN
That simple?
ALICE
It's a big want. ~ Patrick Marber

I was 17 when I left the small Maine town where I'd grown up. I wanted to do something I thought was important with my life, so I headed to California and didn't look back. ~ Patrick Dempsey

When a new kind of 'race trouble' broke out in 1912, Forsyth was a place that had already witnessed the rapid expulsion of an entire people, and many residents, like Charlie Harris, had heard firsthand accounts from relatives who'd taken part in the Cherokee removals. So whenever someone first suggested that blacks in the county should not only be punished for the murder of Mae Crow but driven out of the county forever, the white people of Forsyth knew in their bones that such a thing was possible. After all, many families owed their land and their livelihoods to exactly such a racial cleansing in the 1830s. ~ Patrick Phillips

As soon as you start mixing up politics and some sort of ethical code in music, you've got it all wrong. ~ Patrick Carney

The meal was breakfast: the subject, utility clothing. 'As for the stuff they're turning out for men nowadays,' said Mr Thwaites bitterly, 'I wouldn't give it to my Valet.'

Mr Thwaites' valet was quite an old friend. An unearthly, flitting presence, whose shape, character, age, and appearance could only be dimly conceived, he had been turning up every now and again ever since Miss Roach had known Mr Thwaites. Mostly he was summoned into being as one from whom all second-rate, shoddy, or inferior articles were withheld. But sometimes things were good enough for Mr Thwaites' valet, but would not do for Mr Thwaites. ~ Patrick Hamilton

So I've done my fair share of theater. I have also been very fortunate in that I've been able to come to New York two or three times a year just to see as many shows as possible. I think the live theater culture here is incredible. ~ Neil Patrick Harris

I don't think it's about making us fall. It's about how we get up again. ~ Patrick Ness

Ain't it shame how folk see time like money in the bank when it's more like a loan that might jus' fall due any second? ~ Patrick Neate

It all gave a pleasant illusion of eternity, this quiet sailing under a perfect sky towards a horizon perpetually five miles ahead, never nearer. ~ Patrick O'Brian

With actors like Steve McQueen, Paul Newman and Harrison Ford, what made them such icons is that even in dramatic movies, their characters had a sense of humor. ~ Patrick Wilson

The beauty of Milicent's life and work was, like that of many other women, purposefully hidden to rob her of her power and her influence. Milicent Patrick is the lady from the black lagoon and she's not alone. She's raised out of it now, but there are so many women – in every industry, living and dead – who are still in there. So many other stories are sunken in the depths of history and so many women are still shouldering the burden of harassment and abuse while trying to create. Thanks to technology and the bravery of countless women, the tides are finally changing. ~ Mallory O'Meara

We arrive with our ... 'baggage' and for a while they're brilliant, they're 'Baggage Handlers.' We say, 'Where's your baggage?' They deny all knowledge of it ... 'They're in love' ... they have none. Then ... just as you're relaxing ... a Great Big Juggernaut arrives ... with their baggage. It Got Held Up. One of the greatest myths men have about women is that we overpack. ~ Patrick Marber

(Patrick Henry) He understood that the home was the foundation of a stable society and that the authority a man "exercised within the larger society was rooted in the authority exercised at home." Thus ... the training ground for all sound leadership is the family. ~ David J. Vaughan

Most men find [peace] entirely unlike what they had expected - like love... ~ Patrick O'Brian

I looked down at the board. "The point isn't to win?" I asked. "The point," Bredon said grandly, "is to play a beautiful game. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Stop living in the past, Spongebob ~ Patrick Spongebob Squarepants

I sort of pride myself in my dissatisfaction with my work. I've always been concerned with buying the hype, and having that make your performances suffer. ~ Neil Patrick Harris

Polysyllables obfuscate a preponderant ignorance with so much more style and panache. ~ John Patrick Lowrie

Stray thought for the day: Putting boundaries on how punk should sound/look is the least punk rock thing one can do. Be yourself=Very punk. ~ Patrick Stump

I always have the impression that I write the same book. ~ Patrick Modiano

Hysterically funny, amazingly talented people. That's what I think of when I think of Canada. That, and cold beer. And mountains. ~ Richard Patrick