Patrick Süskind (born 26 March 1949) is a German writer and screenwriter, known best for his internationally famous novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, first published during 1985.
He had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent.
There comes a time in every man's life when he needs his own toilet.
As long as I don't have an idea, I won't write anything.
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.
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.
He decided in favor of life out of sheer spite and malice.
People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.
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.
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.
Very well, but remember this. . . I'll be looking at you when you're laid on the cross and the twelve blows are crashing down on your limbs. When the crowd is finally tired of your screams and wandered home, I will climb up through your blood and sit beside you. I will look deep into your eyes. . . and drop by drop I will trickle my disgust into them like burning acid until. . . finally. . . you perish.
He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting. People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.
He had escaped the abhorrent taint! He was truly completely alone! He was the only human being in the world!
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 who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.
How quickly the apparently solidly laid foundation of one's existence could crumble.
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.
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.
It was good, really, that this external world still existed, if only as a place of refuge.
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.
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.