Patrick Süskind Quotes

• “He succeeded in being considered totally uninteresting. People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.”

  Patrick Süskind

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• “...talent means nothing, while experience, acquired in humility and with hard work, means everything.”

  Patrick Süskind

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• “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 Süskind

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• “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 Süskind

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• “…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 Süskind

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• “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 Süskind

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• “Not a visible enthusiasm but a hidden one, an excitement burning with a cold flame.”

  Patrick Süskind

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• “He who ruled scent ruled the hearts of men.”

  Patrick Süskind

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• “People left him alone. And that was all he wanted.”

  Patrick Süskind

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• “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.”

  Patrick Süskind

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• “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 Süskind

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• “There was only one thing the perfume could not do. It could not turn him into a person who could love and be loved like everyone else. So, to hell with it he thought. To hell with the world. With the perfume. With himself”

  Patrick Süskind

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• “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.
  Grenouille's case was nothing of the sort. There was not the least notion of God in his head. He was not doing penance or wating for some supernatural inspiration. He had withdrawn solely for his own pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid. He lay in his stony crypt like his own corpse, hardly breathing, his heart hardly beating-and yet lived as intensively and dissolutely as ever a rake lived in the wide world outside.”

  Patrick Süskind

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

  Patrick Süskind

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• “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 Süskind

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• “المشي يهدىء الأعصاب ،في المشي تكمن قوة شافية. هذه الرتابة في تحريك قدم بعد الأخرى بإيقاع متزن مع التلويح بالذراعين على الجانبين، هذا التسارع في تردد النفس والنشاط الخفيف في النبض ، ذلك التوظيف الضروري للعينين والأذنين لتحديد الإتجاه والمحافظة على التوازن ، هذا الشعور بالهواء الذي يهف على الجلد، كل هذه أشياء تضطر الروح والجسد للتوحد بطريقة حتمية،وتترك الروح، حتى لو كانت في أشد حالاتها غياباً وتثاقلاً، تنمو وتتسع.”

  Patrick Süskind

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• “...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.”

  Patrick Süskind

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• “He had preserved the best part of her and made it his own: the principle of her scent.”

  Patrick Süskind

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• “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 Süskind

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• “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 Süskind

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• “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 Süskind

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• “ان تعاسة الانسان تنتج من كونه لا يريد أن يقبع ساكناً في غرفته هناك حيث يجب أن يكون”

  Patrick Süskind

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• “Moonlight knew no colors and traced the contours of the terrain only very softly. It covered the land a dirty gray, strangling life all night long. This world molded in lead, where nothing moved but the wind that fell sometimes like a shadow over the gray forests, and where nothing lived but the scent of the naked earth, was the only world he accepted, for it was much like the world of his soul.”

  Patrick Süskind

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• “How quickly the apparently solidly laid foundation of one's existence could crumble.”

  Patrick Süskind

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• “It was good, really, that this external world still existed, if only as a place of refuge.”

  Patrick Süskind

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