Smell Quotes

In my dear pine-clad mountains of the Harz There's a pitchlike smell, a smell I favor Most of all, excepting that of sulphur. But here among these Greeks there's not a trace Of anything like that. I'm curious To find out what they use below in their Hell To stoke the fires with, their kind of fuel. DRYAD. I guess you're smart enough in your own country, Abroad you're something less than apt; 8220 Stop thinking home thoughts, try, Sir, to adapt And show due honor to our sacred oak tree. MEPHISTO. What you have lost, that's what you think about, ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

The smell of her hair, the taste of her mouth, the feeling of her skin seemed to have got inside him, or into the air all round him. She had become a physical necessity. ~ George Orwell

It's so weird how a person can be a normal part of your everyday life, and then just disappear. And when they do, you realize that some of those everyday things go with them. Like the smell of food cooking. ~ Jason Reynolds

The drink was like water, indeed very like the taste of the draughts they had drunk from the Entwash near the borders of the forest, and yet there was some scent or savour in it which they could not describe: it was faint, but it reminded them of the smell of a distant wood borne from afar by a cool breeze at night. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Hit a tripwire of smell and memories explode all at once. A complex vision leaps out of the undergrowth. ~ Diane Ackerman

What does your vagina smell like?' ANSWER: 'My husband's face. ~ Eve Ensler

The smell was that of a sewer under an abattoir. ~ Iain M. Banks

The only sound I'll hear after that will be my own breathing, and the sound of the smell, of my footsteps ~ Markus Zusak

Sometimes when Rose was reading, she would catch a whiff of the musty smell of her book. She put her nose down in the fold and inhaled deeply so that wonderful smell, the smell of adventure in faraway lands, would fill her up. She rubbed her hand across the pages to feel the velvety surface of the paper. When she closed her eyes, her fingertips could even feel the words that were printed there, each letter raised just a little, almost like the special language that her blind aunt Mary could read.
To Rose, a book was as real and alive as if it breathed and walked and spoke. ~ Roger Lea MacBride

When heard someone's boasting,
I could smell shit of bull from afar. ~ Toba Beta

May flowers smell their scent! ~ Hakan

I would regard meanings
given by others so far
as refreshing boon,
I would still be enamoured of rose
or any heartless flower's smell
if tender tides of your affection
had not suffused
the pollens of my heart
with loving aroma. ~ Suman Pokhrel

I'm sure we were all feeling blessed on this ferryboat among the humps of very green
in the sunlight almost coolly burning, like phosphorus
islands, and the water of inlets winking in the sincere light of day, under a sky as blue and brainless as the love of God, despite the smell, the slight, dreamy suffocation, of some kind of petroleum-based compound used to seal the deck's seams. ~ Denis Johnson

In a forum online I saw a thread about favourite smells. There was the usual stuff about fresh cut grass, babies, and whatever, but slowly a controversial contingent arose which named the smell of their own balls as their favourite aroma. ~ Drew Nellins Smith

I mean, if I were a guy, looking to pay a girl to wank
me off, I wouldn't walk in the room and say, "My God, I smell hints of fresh strudel and nutmeg…
quick, grab my dick! ~ Gillian Flynn

American girls always smell like fruit. ~ Courtney Maum

Hallo! A great deal of steam! the pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that. That was the pudding. ~ Charles Dickens

Already it is twilight down in the Laredito. Bats fly forth from their roostings in courthouse and tower and circle the quarter. The air is full of the smell of burning charcoal. Children and dogs squat by the mud stoops and gamecocks flap and settle in the branches of the fruit trees. They go afoot, these comrades, down along a bare adobe wall. Band music carries dimly from the square. They pass a watercart in the street and they pass a hole in the wall where by the light of a small forgefire an old man beats out shapes of metal. They pass in a doorway a young girl whose beauty becomes the flowers about.

They arrive at last before a wooden door. It is hinged into a larger door or gate and all must step over the foot-high sill where a thousand boots have scuffled away the wood, where fools in their hundreds have tripped or fallen or tottered drunkenly into the street. They pass along a ramada in a courtyard by an old grape arbor where small fowl nod in the dusk among the gnarled and barren vines and they enter a cantina where the lamps are lit and they cross stooping under a low beam to a bar and belly up one two three.

There is an old disordered Mennonite in this place and he turns to study them. A thin man in a leather weskit, a black and straightbrim hat set square on his head, a thin rim of whiskers. The recruits order glasses of whiskey and drink them down and order more. There are monte games at tables by the wall and there are whores at another ~ Cormac McCarthy

Smell the aroma of beautiful food, then
go to the latrine and sniff. "What happened to you?" Your dung will answer,
"My beauty was a lure, a trick to get inside you."
Every matter particle does the same
enchantment. Try to see the beginning and end at once. Would you willingly wear manacles
just because they're made of gold? Admire the genius of an artist, but also watch what
happens to him or her in old age, how the expert craftsman's craft diminishes. ~ Rumi

Smell is a long-distance sense, a way of stretching time and finding out in advance what lies ahead. ~ Lyall Watson

Miss Cornelia dropped in that afternoon, puffing a little.
"I don't mind the world or the devil much, but the flesh does rather bother me," she admitted. "You always look as cool as a cucumber, Anne, dearie. Do I smell cherry pie? If I do, ask me to stay to tea ... ~ L.M. Montgomery

He was aware, suddenly, of the chill condensing clammily on his skin, the smell of damp cobblestones, of the very air flowing in and out of his lings.
But most of all he was aware of the woman, this woman, his woman, standing so proudly, waiting patiently for him, only him.
He walked toward her and knew with every fiber of his being that he walked to life itself. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

One thing I always make - and I'm sure this is partly to do with memory and yearning and because I've made it ever since my children were born - I make gingerbread every year. And it's partly just the perfume of the spices in the house, makes it smell like winter to me. ~ Bee Wilson

Marathon Runner
Chopstick legged you sprint
a marathon journey of 1000 steps
to tick off this and that
before the click of now and then
and though you've wandered far
there's curious comfort in return
to that double helix of heritage and home
calligraphied in your ancestral compass.

Listen closely, Lil.
There is no finish line,
no time to beat,
no mileage goals to set.
You are a lone competitor
in a race against yourself.
Breathe Lil, breathe,
and smell the wildflowers
at the wayside. ~ Beryl Dov

There are two special moments in a day I love the most
The moment Before I wake up, the feeling of existment and happinesse like a little kid, the rush of adrenaline into my body the beating of my heart so fast, and the whisper of my heart feeling your arms upon my chest whispers " is she real or are we still dreaming"

The end of the day
I crave you like an addict to drugs
Missing your beautiful face,
Missing the way you smile,
Missing the way you look at me
Missing hearing your voice
Missing the way you smell
Missing your soft skin
Missing how your body shake when my lips thouch your skin ~ Bilal

I couldn't leave there without carrying some of her sadness and loneliness with me like a cloak. There was a smell that I've come to think of as life rot. Where a life has spoiled, gone bad through lack of use. ~ Lisa Unger

Long I have known and feared this day would come. Like the circle of Earth, the circle of life is changing. Here in the north, there are those who can still feel, see, and smell the changes wrought in and around Earth by Money Chiefs. The air is no longer clean, winter grows warmer, rivers flood without a sign, and the soil, once dark and rich, lies pale and weak. Bears, wolves, and other forest Spirits will soon go the way of the buffalo, for their food dwindles like birds that once ruled the skies. ~ Frederic M. Perrin

Smell, the sense which somehow seems a joke, is the one most susceptible to outrage. It will give you no rest. One can close one's eyes to ugliness or shield the ears from sound; but from a powerful smell there is no recourse but flight. ~ Robert Leckie

I'm happiest in an empty church. I love the smell of a church. ~ Michael Patrick King

The secret of wisdom is to be overly curious, like a cat--to take the time to look closely, to use all your senses to see and to touch and to taste and to smell and to hear, and to die because you were overly curious. To keep on wondering...about the afterlife. That is our only mission. Only one. If we don't wonder, then we will never, ever be curious. Then, if like the cat, you wondered too far...you simply no longer will have to ever wonder again. Your mission will be fulfilled. All because of curiosity.

--from The Wise-ass Man who butchered Eve Merriam's wisdom...and Her Secret ~ Stan Sudan

Duncan climbed out my bedroom window, practically falling onto the roof. After he was out, he half jumped, half fell off the roof. Finn watched him apprehensively for a moment, holding my curtain open, but he didn't follow after immediately.
Instead,he straightened up, looking over at me. My anger and resolution were fading, leaving me hopeful that Finn wouldn't really leave things this way.
"Once I'm out this window, lock it behind me," Finn commanded. "Make sure all the doors are locked, and never go anywhere alone. Never go anyplace at night, and if at all possible, always take Matt and Rhys with you." He looked past me for a moment, thinking of something.
"Although neither of them are really good for much of anything..." His dark eyes rested on mine once again. His expression was imploring, and he raised his hand as if he meant to touch my face, but he lowered it again. "You must be careful."
"Okay," I promised him.
With Finn standing right in front of me, I could feel the warmth of his body and smell his cologne. His eyes were locked on mine, and I remembered the way it felt when he tangled his fingers in my hair and held me so close to him I couldn't breathe.
He was so strong and controlled. In the brief moments he allowed himself to let go of his passion with me, it was the most wonderfully suffocating feeling I'd ever had.
I didn't want him to leave, and he didn't want to leave. But we had both made choices we were unwilling to chang ~ Amanda Hocking

The ordinary man's experience is chaotic, irregular, fragmentary. [He] falls in love or reads Spinoza, and these two experiences have nothing to do with each other, or with the noise of the typewriter, or the smell of cooking; in the mind of the poet these experiences are always forming new wholes ~ T. S. Eliot

She liked his unique smell, and it turned on all five of her senses, wanting to see him naked, touch him while naked, hear him as he moaned while he made love, taste his skin, and feel his naked body as she seduced him with the trailing of hungry fingers. ~ Keira D. Skye

The air's crisp with the smell of autumn, and the first few leaves have started to change color. The streets have that family-friendly feel. Store windows already have pumpkins and witches' hats in them. ~ Adriana Mather

The years of disillusion, the long debate of who-belongs-to-who, gathered at the mighty feet of the Bangladesh Liberation War like flood waters rising, gathering thick weeds and crusty dirt and pulling it all in one direction. At times, when the body count was high and the air tasted like bloody ash, the way mass graves smell, Sariyah had wondered what progress was supposed to taste like. Often it tasted like unanswered questions, stuck in the teeth. Bangladesh had given her the true answer, though: progress at its best is home-grown. It should taste like joy – pure, unhindered joy. Like the freshest sun-ripened mango on a tree, a little sunrise in her palm. ~ Katherine Russell

The English language is mysterious. The secret of our dog is to be found in it. 'Dog' spelt backwards is 'God'. The dog, then, is the road which, if travelled backwards, from the deepest depths, from the roots of the tree of smell, touch and taste, will turn you into a God. Thus the dog is the guide of the Blind Traveller, of the Pilgrim of Immortality. It is God backwards. ~ Miguel Serrano

To-day I think
Only with scents, - scents dead leaves yield,
And bracken, and wild carrot's seed,
And the square mustard field;
Odours that rise
When the spade wounds the root of tree,
Rose, currant, raspberry, or goutweed,
Rhubarb or celery;
The smoke's smell, too,
Flowing from where a bonfire burns
The dead, the waste, the dangerous,
And all to sweetness turns.
It is enough
To smell, to crumble the dark earth,
While the robin sings over again
Sad songs of Autumn mirth.
- A poem called DIGGING. ~ Edward Thomas

Once the scent caught me on the street in Greenwich Village. I stopped in my tracks and looked around. Where was it coming from? A shop? The trees? A passerby? I could not tell. I only knew the smell made me cry. I stood on the sidewalk in Greenwich Village as people brushed by, and felt suddenly young and terribly open, as if I were waiting for something. I live in an ocean of smell, and the ocean is my mother. ~ Rebecca Wells

God, you smell so good, just like I remember. I was so afraid you wouldn't want me, you wouldn't forgive me, but I had to come here, at least try.I've only ever wanted you. You're the only person I've ever made love to. ~ Kindle Alexander

In 90% of cases, you can start with one of the two most effective ways to open a speech: ask a question or start with a story.

Our brain doesn't remember what we hear. It remembers only what we "see" or imagine while we listen.

You can remember stories. Everything else is quickly forgotten.

Smell is the most powerful sense out of 4 to immerse audience members into a scene.

Every sentence either helps to drive your point home, or it detracts from clarity. There is no middle point.

If you don't have a foundational phrase in your speech, it means that your message is not clear enough to you, and if it's not clear to you, there is no way it will be clear to your audience.

Share your failures first. Show your audience members that you are not any better, smarter or more talented than they are.

You are not an actor, you are a speaker. The main skill of an actor is to play a role; to be someone else. Your main skill as a speaker is to be yourself.

People will forgive you for anything except for being boring. Speaking without passion is boring. If you are not excited about what you are talking about, how can you expect your audience to be excited?

Never hide behind a lectern or a table. Your audience needs to see 100% of your body.

Speak slowly and people will consider you to be a thoughtful and clever person.

Leaders don't talk much, but each word holds a lot of m ~ Andrii Sedniev

He caught Ben's come in the napkin, the smell making his mouth water harder than any chile sauce could. ~ B.A. Tortuga

A flower doesn't count the number of bees that come nor does it pump up its smell just when you walk by. Its nature, as is ours, is to expand itself no matter if anyone ever loves us back. ~ John Douillard

This is what Liza knows: People go under. They fall off the world, they go beneath and drown and die. Sometimes, nothing saves you ... Liza knows how black the world is, how fast it spins, and how you have to take the taste of apples and the smell of your little girl's orange zest shampoo where you find them. You have to hold these things and strive, always, for one more word and one more step. You push forward and you fight, for as long as ever you can, until the black world spins and the moon pulls the tide and the water rises up and takes you. ~ Joshilyn Jackson

Seaworth had a lordly ring to it, but down deep he was still Davos of Flea Bottom, coming home to his city on its three high hills. He knew as much of ships and sails and shores as any man in the Seven Kingdoms, and had fought his share of desperate fights sword to sword on a wet deck. But to this sort of battle he came a maiden, nervous and afraid. Smugglers do not sound warhorns and raise banners. When they smell danger, they raise sail and run before the wind. ~ George R.R. Martin

The smell of the earth, so astoundingly fresh: it strikes Brown like a thing he might eat. His ears throb. His body feels as if it is still moving through the air. He is, he thinks, the first man ever to fly and stand at the exact same time. The war out of the machine. He holds the small bag of letters up in salute. On they come, soldiers, people, the light drizzle of gray.
Ireland.
A beautiful country. A bit savage on a man all the same.
Ireland. ~ Colum McCann

As a child I was a good boy. Even if I wasn't playing tennis I don't think I'd have done things like smoking or getting drunk. I'm lucky I never liked the taste of alcohol - I know, I'm Scottish so what's wrong with me? - but I never even liked the smell of the stuff. It's the same with smoking, it never appealed to me. I guess I missed out on my Kevin-The-Teenager phase. ~ Andy Murray

Years ago, I told myself that one day I would stop feeling this quiet but abiding rage about the things I have been through at the hands of others. I would wake up and there would be no flashbacks. I wouldn't wake up and think about my histories of violence. I wouldn't smell the yeasty aroma of beer and for a second, for several minutes, for hours, forget where I was. And on and on and on. That day never came, or it hasn't come, and I am no longer waiting for it.

A different day has come, though. I flinch less and less when I am touched. I don't always see gentleness as the calm before the storm because, more often than not, I can trust that no storm is coming. I harbor less hatred toward myself. I try to forgive myself for my trespasses. ~ Roxane Gay

Molly wondered if these boys really loved baseball, the sound and smell of it, the rhythm of it, the leather and wood, the grass and dirt, the story and surprise in a good game. ~ Mick Cochrane

Everything's digital now, but sometimes I'll buy a paperback if I love the book. I love the smell of them too. Like the first time you open them up, and they're fresh and new. Or old books, ~ Jay McLean

Silence in the shell of a city, no baby crying, no car honking, no ambulance shrieking, no lovers moaning, no drunks throwing up in the alley, no lights, nothing but wind and rain and snow in its season and rust and a rattling of open doors and carcass smell. It was a possibility like a brain tumor or a scorpion bite. ~ Anne Roiphe

She chose books because they never left her lonely the way that Kirk had left her lonely. BEcause company was often nothing of the kind, whereas a good book always was.
She chose books for the smell of fresh-pressed pages, for the yellow-brown musk of library mould, but always for the breathy kiss of paper rustling. She chose books because some of the held prose that made her weep, or poetry that winded her, and words that mae her heart skip beats.
She chose books because some came readey-made with characters that seemed like perfect versions of hrself, all of them little proofs that somehow, somewhere, it might just be possible for her to be better: to be popular, powerful, sexy and smart.
She chose books because they lied to her with more conviction than people ever had. ~ Dan Micklethwaite

Did you get me that movie about Genghis Khan?
'It's in the Netflix queue, but that's not the surprise. You don't need to worry, it'll be something good. I just don't want you to feel depressed about going home.'
Oh, I won't. But it would be cool to have a stream like this in the backyard. Can you make one?
'Ummm... no.'
I figured. Can't blame a hound for trying.
Oberon was indeed surprised when we got back home to Tempe. Hal had made the arrangements for me and Oberon perked up as soon as we were dropped off by the shuttle from the car rental company.
'Hey, smells like someone's in my territory,' he said.
'Nobody could be here without my permission, you know that.'
'Flidais did it.'
'That isn't Flidais you smell, believe me.'
I opened the front door, and Oberon immediately ran to the kitchen window that gazed upon the backyard. He barked joyously when he saw what was waiting for him there.
'French poodles! All black and curly with poofy little tails!'
'And every one of them in heat.'
'Oh, WOW! Thanks Atticus! I can't wait to sniff their asses!'
He bounded over to the door and pawed at it because the doggie door was closed to prevent the poodles from entering.
'You earned it, buddy. Hold on, get down off the door so I can open it for you, and be careful, don't hurt any of them.'
I opened the door, expecting him to bolt through it and dive into his own personal canine harem, but instead he took one ~ Kevin Hearne

You could drop me anywhere in the universe, blindfolded, and I'd know this was his room just from the smell. ~ Beth Revis

The kids I knew growing up who worked on bikes all loved the smell of gas. It is the liquid agent for speed. ~ Rachel Kushner

So many of my sisters are so completely unaware of who the real criminals and dogs are. They blame themselves for being hungry; they hate themselves for surviving the best way they know how, to see so much fear, doubt, hurt, and self hatred is the most painful part of being in this concentration camp. "Anyway, in spite of all, i feel a breeze behind my neck, turning to a hurricane and when i take a deep breath I can smell freedom ~ Assata Shakur

On the bottom staff - the taste of earth, worms, and dust; the smell of dead leaves and frankincense. On the top - the luminosity of awareness making sense of transience and predestination. Three quiet major chords marked the moment of death, because death was sweet. It was our true home, the home we'd left and been trying to get back to. It's what we had passed through before and would pass through again, a moment of truth that suspended the weight of thought, the weight of the will to inhabit a dead universe. ~ Nikolai Grozni

My Dearest,

I miss you, my darling, as I always do, but today is especially hard because the ocean has been singing to me, and the song is that of our life together. I can almost feel you beside me as I write this letter, and I can smell the scent of wildflowers that always reminds me of you. But at this moment, these things give me no pleasure. Your visits have been coming less often, and I feel sometimes as if the greatest part of who I am is slowly slipping away.

I am trying, though. At night when I am alone, I call for you, and whenever my ache seems to be the greatest, you still seem to find a way to return to me. Last night, in my dreams, I saw you on the pier near Wrightsville Beach. The wind was blowing through your hair, and your eyes held the fading sunlight. I am struck as I see you leaning against the rail. You are beautiful, I think as I see you, a vision that I can never find in anyone else. I slowly begin to walk toward you, and when you finally turn to me, I notice that others have been watching you as well. "Do you know her?" they ask me in jealous whispers, and as you smile at me, I simply answer with the truth. "Better than my own heart."

I stop when I reach you and take you in my arms. I long for this moment more than any other. It is what I live for, and when you return my embrace, I give myself over to this moment, at peace once again.

I raise my hand and gently touch your cheek and you tilt your head and cl ~ Nicholas Sparks

No one wants to admit we're addicted to music. That's just not possible. No one's addicted to music and television and radio. We just need more of it, more channels, a larger screen, more volume. We can't bear to be without it, but no, nobody's addicted. We could turn it off anytime we wanted. I fit a window frame into a brick wall. With a little brush, the size for fingernail polish, I glue it. The window is the size of a fingernail. The glue smells like hair spray. The smell tastes like oranges and gasoline. ~ Chuck Palahniuk

Our movements through time and space seem somehow trivial compared to a heap of boiled meat in broth, the smell of saffron, garlic, fishbones and Pernod. ~ Anthony Bourdain

It had this amazing spicy, pee-y smell. ~ Melvin Burgess

I was shocked to find that there were actually climate scientists who wouldn't share the raw data, but would only share their conclusions in summary graphs that were used to prove their various theories about planet warming. In fact I began to smell something really bad, and the worse that smell got, the deeper I looked. ~ Burt Rutan

The sound of your voice makes the chaos around me vanish. The smell of your hair calms my soul. The sight of your smile tames the wolf inside of me, and touching your skin ... " He glanced at our joined hands. "Touching your skin makes the broken parts of me whole." - Aren from Hunter's Moon ~ Lisa Kessler

And all the world is football shaped, It's just for me to kick in space, And I can see, hear, smell, touch, taste, And I've got one, two, three, four, five Senses working overtime, Trying to take this all in, I've got one, two, three, four, five Senses working overtime, Trying to taste the difference, 'Tween the lemons and limes, The pain and the pleasure, And the church bells softly chime. ~ Andy Partridge

What Jessica said - hair much shorter, wearing a darker mouth of different outline, harder lipstick, her typewriter banking in a phalanx of letters between them - was: "We're going to be married. We're trying very hard to have a baby."
All at once there is nothing but his asshole between Gravity and Roger. "I don't care. Have his baby. I'll love you both - just come with me Jess, please ... I need you ... "
She flips a red lever on her intercom. Far away a buzzer goes off. "Security." Her voice is perfectly hard, the word still clap-echoing in the air as in through the screen door of the Quonset office wth a smell of tide flats come the coppers, looking grim. Security. Her magic word, her spell against demons. ~ Thomas Pynchon

None of us had been in love, not really, until now. Anything we had called love came back to us as mockery in the face of this sudden flight from reason. Andy had said he was in love with Missy, and it was a shame Missy was not in love with him. A daily lament rose from him like the steam of the heat from the pipes at school. Andy's mother hit the counter with her fist. "They're too young," she said, talking about Natalie and Dion, and we knew she was talking about their tongues running along the inside of each other's teeth and the suddenly anxious too-tight grip of her hand between his legs, and the taste of each other's skin, and the smell of each other's bodies, and the feel of him slipping inside her and her settling down over him, the shape of her mouth, the shape of his. She was talking about their bodies but thinking about the words they had used. Everyone knew. "Love," she finally growled, as if the creature itself had risen from her dreams to take over her kitchen. She gripped a package of spaghetti as if it was a club and stared at the wall, paralyzed by the idea of them out there. ~ Jason Brown

She loves the smell of his fur, all warm and musky and cat-spit clean. ~ Sara Stark

There are some things that don't change much. I find the smell of a dish, or the way a certain spice is crushed, or just a quick look at the way something has been put on a plate, can pull me back to another place and time. I love those memories that seem so far away, yet you can hold them and carry them with you, even forget them, and then, with a single taste or hint or a smell, be chaperoned back to a beautiful moment. ~ Tessa Kiros

I came in looking for coffee, but the smell of bacon wafts through the air and my body follows on its own. Coffee turns into two eggs, bacon and cheese on a roll, an orange juice and a chocolate pudding. Actually, two chocolate puddings. Because people who pass by fresh chocolate pudding without grabbing one just can't be trusted. ~ Vi Keeland

He felt so lost, he said later, that the familiar studio felt like a haunted valley deep in the mountains, with the smell of rotting leaves, the spray of a waterfall, the sour fumes of fruit stashed away by a monkey; even the dim glow of the master's oil lamp on its tripod looked to him like misty moonlight in the hills. ~ Ryunosuke Akutagawa

I stepped out to the lawn. I remember the air that night, and how it was so brisk that it could revive the dead. The fragrance of eucalyptus stoking a home fire, the smell of wet grass, of dung fuel, of tobacco, of swamp air, and the perfume of hundreds of roses
this was the scent of Missing. No, it was the scent of a continent. ~ Abraham Verghese

What the hell is this stuff?" he muttered, frowning at the oily spot on the linen cloth. "Pearlman slathered it on me this morning."
"It's macassar oil. Gentlemen use it to keep their hair neat. Nicholas used it," she added pointedly.
"Well, tomorrow he's giving it up. I smell like a rotten apple."
"You do not. And I think it looks rather nice."
He sent her an incredulous look. "I look like an otter. And everything I put my head against gets greasy."
"That's why someone invented the antimacassar," she told him, almost smiling.
"The-aha!" He laughed as he made the connection. "Of course. First they invent something stupid, then something ugly to make up for it. We live in a wondrous age, Annie. ~ Patricia Gaffney

Now he slept soundly through the nights, and often he dreamed of trains, and often of one particular train: He was on it; he could smell the coal smoke; a world went by. And then he was standing in that world as the sound of the train died away. A frail familiarity in these scenes hinted to him that they came from his childhood. Sometimes he woke to hear the sound of the Spokane International fading up the valley and realized he'd been hearing the locomotive as he dreamed. ~ Denis Johnson

The days get longer and the nights smell green I guess it's not surprising but it's spring and I should leave. ~ Modest Mouse

There is something irrational about reading. Before you read a book, you can know immediately whether or not you are going to like it, just as with people, you can tell just from looking at them whether or not you'll be their friend. You smell it, you sniff it, you wonder whether it's worth spending time in its company. The pages of a book have an invisible alchemy that imprints itself on our brain. A book is a living creature. ~ Jean-Michel Guenassia

On the island of By-the-Sea you could always smell two things: salt and magic. ~ Katrina Leno

Is what I am not saying, young LaMont Chu, is why you cease to seem to give total effort of self since you begin with the clipping pictures of great professional figures for your adhesive tape and walls. No? Because, privileged gentlemen and boys I am saying, is always something that is too. Cold. Hot. Wet and dry. Very bright sun and you see the purple dots. Very bright hot and you have no salt. Outside is wind, the insects which like the sweat. Inside is smell of heaters, echo, being jammed in together, tarp is overclose to baseline, not enough of room, bells inside clubs which ring the hour loudly to distract, clunk of machines vomiting sweet cola for coins. Inside roof too low for the lob. Bad lighting, so. Or outside: the bad surface. Oh no look no: crabgrass in cracks along baseline. Who could give the total, with crabgrass. Look here is low net high net. Opponent's relatives heckle, opponent cheats, linesman in semifinal is impaired or cheats. You hurt. You have the injury. Bad knee and back. Hurt groin area from not stretching as asked. Aches of elbow. Eyelash in eye. The throat is sore. A too pretty girl in audience, watching. Who could play like this? Big crowd overwhelming or too small to inspire. Always something.' [p.458] ~ David Foster Wallace

Joy has to do with seeing how big, how completely unobstructed, and how precious things are. Resenting what happens to you and complaining about your life are like refusing to smell the wild roses when you go for a morning walk, or like being so blind that you don't see a huge black raven when it lands in the tree that you're sitting under. We can get so caught up in our own personal pain or worries that we don't notice that the wind has come up or that somebody has put flowers on the diningroom table or that when we walked out in the morning, the flags weren't up, and that when we came back, they were flying. ~ Pema Chodron

I have always wondered what it would have been like for an outsider to have witnessed firsthand the gathering dark of Hitler's rule. How did the city look, what did one hear, see, and smell, and how did diplomats and other visitors interpret the events occurring around them? Hindsight tells us that during that fragile time the course of history could so easily have been changed. Why, then, did no one change it? Why did it take so long to recognize the real danger posed by Hitler and his regime? ~ Erik Larson

The true man of science will know nature better by his finer organization; he will smell, taste, see, hear, feel, better than other men. His will be a deeper and finer experience. We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy. It is with science as with ethics,
we cannot know truth by contrivance and method; the Baconian is as false as any other, and with all the helps of machinery and the arts, the most scientific will still be the healthiest and friendliest man, and possess a more perfect Indian wisdom. ~ Henry David Thoreau

So sensitive was he to odour and sound, that he found human speech quite inadequate to express the richness of these two universes. He once said of a certain odour in the house, 'It's rather like the trail of a hare where a spaniel has followed it, and some time ago a donkey crossed it too.' Both scent and sound had for him rich emotional meaning, innate and acquired. It was obvious that many odours that he encountered for the first time roused a strong impulse of pursuit, while others he sought to avoid. It was obvious, too, that many odours acquired an added emotional meaning through their associations. One day when he was out on the moor by himself one of his paws was badly cut on a broken bottle. It happened that while he limped home there was a terrifying thunderstorm. When at last he staggered in at the front door, Elizabeth mothered him and cleaned up his foot with a certain well-known disinfectant. The smell of it was repugnant to him, but it now acquired a flavour of security and kindliness which was to last him all his life. ~ Olaf Stapledon

Sidda can't help herself. She just loves books. Loves the way they feel, the way they smell, loves the black letters marching across the white pages ... ~ Rebecca Wells

The wooden shelves were tall and packed with worn covers of books read many times over. Pages were yellowed and paperbacks had arched spines like old sway-backed horses. It was an old folks' home for secondhand books, with that smell of old newsprint and slightly musty wood smell. ~ Nathan Fillion

I went back every evening, after work, for nearly a year. I learned the meaning of the cud of a leaf and the glisten of wet pebbles, and the special significance of curves and angles. A great deal of the writing was unwritten. Plot three dots on a graph and join them; you now have a curve with certain characteristics. Extend that curve while maintaining the characteristics, and it has meaning, up where no dots were plotted.

In just this way I learned to extend the curve of a grass-blade and of a protruding root, of the bent edges of wetness on a drying headstone. I quit smoking so I could sharpen my sense of smell, because the scent of earth after a rain has a clarifying effect on graveyard reading, as if the page were made whiter and the ink darker. I began to listen to the wind, and to the voices of birds and small animals, insects and people; because to the educated ear, every sound is filtered through the story written on graves, and becomes a part of it.

("The Graveyard Reader") ~ Theodore Sturgeon

What an idiot he was! Had he really thought he could get away with kissing a marquess's daughter?
And not just any marquess's daughter, either. Celia looking oh so tempting in her sumptuous purple gown. Lovely, angry Celia.
Lady Celia, he reminded himself. But he'd never be able to think of her like that again, not when the taste and smell of her still filled his senses.
Hearing voices behind him, he slipped into an empty room to wrangle his emotions into some semblance of control. But it was no use. He could still feel her body yielding to his, still hear her rapid breathing as he'd taken every advantage.
Damn her and her soft mouth and her delicate sighs and her fingers curling into the nape of his neck so that all he wanted to do was press her down onto a bench...
"Hell and blazes!" He thrust his hands through his hair. What in thunder was he supposed to do about her?
And why had she let him kiss her, anyway? Why had she waited until he'd made a complete fool of himself before she'd drawn that damned pistol?
Oh. Right. That was why. To make a fool of him herself. To lull him into a false sense of security so she could prove she could control any situation.
Well, he'd stymied that, but it was little consolation. He'd behaved like a damned mooncalf, devouring her mouth as if he were a wolf and she were supper. If he'd allowed her to speak of their kiss, she probably would have pointed out exactly how insolent he'd been. Would have warn ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Christmas in Barbados

I miss being in Barbados in December,
That is a time I always remember,
The smell of varnish on the wooden floors
and the smell of paint on the wooden floors.
The smell of cloves as the ham was baked
And the smell of the rum in mother's fruit cake
The smell of coconut as she bake de sweetbread,
And the smell of the cloth, as she made up de bed ~ Charmaine J Forde

Unfriending me when I didn't even know we were friends? It's like breaking wind when you're home alone. If I can't smell you, knock yourself out. ~ George Takei

People for the most part can smell lies. ~ Joe Rogan

A battle is like a deadly sort of dance, Lyss thought. We learn the steps by sparring in the practice yards, by marching up and down the field in the hope that we'll remember the moves when we're distracted by the smell of blood and the shrieks of the wounded anddeath howling toward us from all sides. We go into battle to the cadence of drums and guns, but our dance cards are blank. We have no idea who we'll dance with that day, when death might cut in, and who'll leave the floor alive. ~ Cinda Williams Chima

Obviously I want the fragrance to smell good. I tell people all the time that when you see someone there can obviously be a physical attraction, but scent is something that stays with you. It's something that you remember about a person. ~ Chris Paul

This isn't about you ... "
"Well, it should be!" he shouted, and I flinched. "Everything I do is about you, and I want the reverse to be true, too." I wiped more tears, my throat aching with words that would only make this worse.
"What, you need a reminder? That's what he was doing, right? And now you smell like him. You probably taste like him. You should taste like me ... "
He was on me before I could even catch my breath ... ~ Rachel Vincent

Weightlessness makes astronauts lose taste and smell in space. In the absence of gravity, molecules cannot be volatile, so few of them get into our noses deeply enough to register as odors. This is a problem for nutritionists designing space food. ~ Diane Ackerman

She smells better," Claire said. "And she made me cookies. ~ Rachel Caine

I read a lot of social history. If I'm in an art gallery and a picture intrigues me, I immediately write down the title and I google it. I do a lot of googling and looking out for good stories. I can almost smell them sometimes. ~ Emma Donoghue

As we were walking along, Britta took her book out of her schoolbag and smelled it. She let all of us smell it. New books smell so good you can tell how much fun it's going to be to read them. ~ Astrid Lindgren

Well, even to this day, if I smell a Big Mac, I'm like Pavlov's dog. My mouth starts watering immediately, like, 'Man, that is so good,' but I can't take a bite of it. ~ Morgan Spurlock

The stories we read in books, what's presented to us as being interesting - they have very little to do with real life as it's lived today. I'm not talking about straight-up escapism, your vampires, serial killers, codes hidden in paintings, and so on. I mean so-called serious literature. A boy goes hunting with his emotionally volatile father, a bereaved woman befriends an asylum seeker, a composer with a rare neurological disorder walks around New York, thinking about the nature of art. People looking back over their lives, people having revelations, people discovering meaning. Meaning, that's the big thing. The way these books have it, you trip over a rock you'll find some hidden meaning waiting there. Everyone's constantly on the verge of some soul-shaking transformation. And it's - if you'll forgive my language - it's bullshit. Modern people live in a state of distraction. They go from one distraction to the next, and that's how they like it. They don't transform, they don't stop to smell the roses, they don't sit around recollecting long passages of their childhood - Jesus, I can hardly remember what I was doing two days ago. My point is, people aren't waiting to be restored to some ineffable moment. They're not looking for meaning. That whole idea of the novel - that's finished. ~ Paul Murray

Waking up, for many people, is apparently a positive experience. There are twittering birds and the smell of fresh coffee fills the air.

These people do not live at my house. ~ Amy Petrie Shaw

What did Saturday's used to taste like? Like eggs and fried ham and the bitter smell of hair in heavy rollers. Like long quiet hours and making up after a fight. Like ointment and bruising. Like waiting, especially, for something - anything - to happen. ~ Lauren Oliver

I wanted him to see in that plate of pasta everything that, by leaving, he would no longer be able to look at, or touch, or caress, listen to, smell: never again. ~ Elena Ferrante

She's always sniffing the bottles in the spice cabinet."
I didn't know she'd even noticed. At first it was just curiosity; why did fennel and cumin, identical twins, have such opposing personalities? I had crushed the seeds beneath my fingertips, where the scents lingered for hours. Another day I'd opened a bottle of nutmeg, startled when the little spheres came rattling out in a mothball-scented cloud. How could something so delicate have such a ferocious smell? And I watched, fascinated, as the supple, plump, purple vanilla beans withered into brittle pods and surrendered their perfume to the air. The spices were all so interesting; it was impossible to walk through the kitchen without opening the cupboard to find out what was going on in there. ~ Ruth Reichl