But perhaps we ask too much of him. Perhaps he really was only a god.

Grenouille no longer wanted to go somewhere, but only to go away, away from human beings.

Mrs. Porter was fat, and her breath smelled like burnt newspapers.

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.

How quickly the apparently solidly laid foundation of one’s existence could crumble.

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.

As long as I don’t have an idea, I won’t write anything.

There comes a time in every man’s life when he needs his own toilet.

He was not bound. No one led him by the arm. He got out of the carriage as if he were a free man.

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...