Patrick Süskind, Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer Quotes

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

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

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

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.

He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself.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.

He had escaped the abhorrent taint! He was truly completely alone! He was the only human being in the world!

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 had lived in the wide world outside.

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