The Perfume Burned His Eyes Quotes

“Suicide is always an act between two people, isn’t it? The one committing it and the one who discovers it. I wondered how much she had considered that before doing what she did.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“I mean, for a shithole it’s a cozy shithole and I do happen to like shitholes.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“I’ve known you for years. Everyone says you were beautiful when you were young, but I want to tell you I think you’re more beautiful now than then. Rather than your face as a young woman, I prefer your face as it is now. Ravaged.
—from Marguerite Duras, The Lover”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“was fine with waiting. I was fine with anything that kept me from confronting the inevitable.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“the shit would be hitting the fan very soon in my world and until it did I was more than happy to accompany him wherever he was going.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“I peered at myself in the bedroom mirror and thought I was looking at Lou for a split second. In an instant I was me again. The me who had fucked things up royally and would have to answer for a shitload of mistakes.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“A girl and her mother . . . you know . . . you can’t separate ’em. Can’t get in the middle of that triangle.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“the dead have no right to privacy. The dead have nothing. They are nothing. They’re gone.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“I don’t think he liked being alone yet there weren’t many people he liked being with. Knowing this made me feel special.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“didn’t want to interrupt him but I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay inside of that moment with him . . . inside the quiet. It felt right. It almost felt good.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“because you’re an actress and you experience pain in imaginary ways . . . does it . . . does it . . . does it mitigate the suffering you feel in real life? . . . I would think because you’re so consciously used to it and you have a perspective, an objectivity, you know? . . . There’s a distance, right? . . . Does it help you in real life when everything starts to fall apart?” Rose kissed him on his forehead. “It doesn’t hurt any less, Lou.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“I was fine with waiting. I was fine with anything that kept me from confronting the inevitable. I was in a heap of trouble. I knew I had to face up to everything soon.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“was fine with waiting. I was fine with anything that kept me from confronting the inevitable. I was in a heap of trouble. I knew I had to face up to everything soon.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“I don’t think it’s possible for one person to express more hatred toward another without violence.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“Nobody in Lou’s world outside himself ever expected anything. His whole operation was run on a whim, on impulse and the assumption that things would always go his way in the end. No coordination or prearrangements were needed because Lou was certain that everyone else would anticipate and understand his needs through some form of telepathic communication.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“the shape of her eyes and the lines of mascara around it were perfect cosmic geometry.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“Elton John broke the silence with his “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road.” This was unbearable. The Yellow Brick Road was my life as I had known it up until now, but it was time to say goodbye. Things would never be the same again.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“For it was brilliant: yes, the song of course, but the choice of it in that very instant equally genius and in perfect harmony with the time, the place, the mood, the lights, the musty stench of the bar in its melancholic, intoxicated East Side afternoon. It was Lou’s choice. Had to be.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“We call it art, not power. And all I can say about it is that I am able to assert my will in a certain way that can have a subtle influence over the way events unfold.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“when you are operating in the occult world the unpredictable becomes more likely—maybe—if you believe in that stuff.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“You are reborn according to the karma you create and bring with you from one life to the next, but whatever your past life may have been, it bares little resemblance to who you are today because what we consider ourselves to be, the ‘me’ that we identify so strongly with, is merely a collection of patterns, habits, thoughts, ideas, impressions, and histories that have been cobbled together from various causes and conditions that arose due to prior karma; the self is an illusion, as empty as a rainbow. What does get reincarnated is purely an impartial, impersonal, and wholly energetic field that has become imbued with a positivity and/or negativity outside of any identifiable qualities of self.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“They think we’ve had many lives before this one and will have many more after this, and everybody always thinks they were a king or a pharaoh but they could have just as easily been an insect or a three-legged dog or a slitherer with suction cups.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“Never give them any ammunition.” This was the reasoning behind keeping herself a mystery to our fellow students.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“I had imagined all kinds of scenarios that would crack the glacier that loomed between knowing her and being a mere stranger. “You dropped your pencil.” It’s strange how things that unfold into such monumental events begin with such tiny, mundane, and ordinary moments.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes

“Maybe all the stuff with my dad had given birth to a fuck it kind of attitude in me. I’m not really sure.”
― Michael Imperioli, The Perfume Burned His Eyes