A babe whose feet smell of fresh butter, of bodily smells of pancakes and milky goodness and “where the hair makes a cowlick” smells like caramel, so sweet.

The odour of humans is always a fleshy odour — that is, a sinful odour.

Odours have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances, emotions or will. The persuasive power of an odour 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.

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

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

And the awful thing was that Grenouille, although he knew that this odour was his odour, could not smell it. Virtually drowning in himself, he could not for the life of him smell himself!

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.