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Whoever has survived his own birth in a garbage can is not so easily shoved back out of this world again.
He was an abomination from the start. He decided in favor of life out of sheer spite and sheer malice.
All these grotesque incongruities between the richness of the world perceivable by smell and the poverty of language were enough for the lad Grenouille
to doubt if language made any sense at all;
He had gathered tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of specific smells and kept them so clearly, so randomly, at his disposal, that he could not only recall them when he smelled them again, but could also actually smell them simply upon recollection.
A hundred thousand odors seemed worthless in the presence of this scent. This one scent was the higher principle, the pattern by which the others must be ordered. It was pure beauty. Grenouille knew for certain that unless he possessed this scent, his life would have no meaning.
Contained within it was the magic formula for everything that could make a scent, a perfume, great: delicacy, power, stability, variety, and terrifying, irresistible beauty.
It was clear to him now why he had clung to life so tenaciously, so savagely. He must become a creator of scents. And not just an average one. But, rather, the greatest perfumer of all time.
