76 Quotes About Scents

A soaking rain had just stopped, and his boots sank deeply into the nitrogen-rich soil. The entire orchard smelled of wet wood and ripe fruit. It was a strong dizzying scent, and nothing else was quite like it- though his grandfather used to say this smell was identical to the limestone caves of Lower Normandy: cold and dripping, where cask upon cask of Calvados, the great fortified apple brandy of Norman lords, slept away the years.

She brought her wrist up to her nose again. Mmm, it was getting even more interesting. That vanilla note, then something sharper. But it wasn't jasmine, as she'd first thought; it was more lemony, but not obvious kitchen-cleaner lemon... a kind of warm, smoky citrus. Burned lemon peel, that was it.

She smelled like gardenias. Plus something muskier, gardenias with carnal knowledge.

Now for the base note of the bean: a wild and bitter blackberry, like fruit picked after the turn of the year. It smells of woodland, and falling leaves, and the dark scent of winter spices.

This is the smell of June, she wanted to write to Christopher... honeysuckle, green hay, wet linen hung out to dry...

Labeled apothecary bottles filled with raw material oils lined the risers: flowers, resins, leaves, woods, mosses, spices, herbs, seeds, grains, roots, bark, and fruit. From the animal kingdom came fixatives: civet, musk, and ambergris. The absolutes, the resinoids, the essential oils.

Roux flung a handful of dried shavings on to the embers of his fire; the scent was sharp and immediate, lemon grass and lavender, sage and applewood and pine, like the campfires of my childhood.

He looked up at the dark line of trees and breathed in slowly, smelling wild garlic, mulched leaves, a fox den somewhere and a sweeter scent. Fruit blossom, he thought. Then that small mystery was eclipsed by a larger one. A stranger scent hid among the blossom, sweet and resinous at once. Lilies, John thought, drawing the scent deeper. Lilies mixed with pitch.

And yet there is something oddly attractive about the crowded shop window with its piles of boxes and tins, and its Hallowe'en witches in darkest chocolate and colored straw, and plump marzipan pumpkins and maple-candy skulls just glimpsed beneath the half-closed shutter.There was a scent too- a smoky scent of apples and burnt sugar, vanilla and rum and cardamom and chocolate.