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.

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.

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.

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.

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

...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.

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.