The Scent Keeper Quotes

“We sat in silence, letting the green in the air heal what it could.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Scents were like rain, or birds. They left and came back.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Because people want their bodies to smell like oceans they’ll never have time to visit. They wear a perfume that promises sex, when all they really want is someone to snuggle on the couch with in baggy pajamas. We’ll all choose a good story over the truth any day.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“We humans are almost entirely made of water, except for the stones of our secrets. May mine become solid places to land your feet as you cross the wide river of your life.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“It’s amazing how easily we can cast ourselves in the role of hero.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“The kids threw the rumors out like lit matches, to see what would catch. I stayed silent, listening to the fizz and spark of their words, pretending I was water, putting them out.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Maybe that’s how it always is, I thought—we all just go along, catching glimpses of one another, thinking we know everything.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“My father had always told me that my birthday was the first day of spring. Not a specific day of the year, but the feeling- an undercurrent of warmth waking up the earth. The scent of violets. Green in the air, he called it.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“I listened, while the scents found their hiding places in the cracks in the floorboards, and the words of the story, and the rest of my life.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“We are the unwitting carriers of our parents’ secrets, the ripples made by stones we never saw thrown.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Scents were always about what was growing and what was dying. What would last through the next season. This was just with people instead of trees or flowers or dirt. Maybe I could read them after all. The thought gave me hope.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Her song was so beautiful that it could take people back to all the things they wished they had done, and all the things they wished they could be.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Everyone else thought it was magic, but I knew better. In the end, it wasn’t the flavors or the alcohol that made people relax—it was the experience of being seen and understood.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“The smell of dry earth, opening to the rain in the spring. It unlocked me like a key.
Once upon a time, Emmeline.
"Petrichor," Rene said. "The word comes from petra, which means stones, and ichor, the ethereal blood of the Greek gods. Plants release an oil that stops their seeds from germinating when it would be too difficult to survive. The oil soaks into the pores of the stones, and is set free with water. They say it's the smell of waiting, paid off.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“The missing element couldn't be in the top notes. I figured that out quickly enough. Top notes were the ones that caught your attention, the glittering invitations that led you deeper into a fragrance.
It couldn't be a middle note, either- those warm, round things, full and loving. Taking them out would induce the soft purple of wanting, but that was still too passive. Need lived in base notes. It was the difference between appetite and craving, a bruised heart and a broken one. Base notes were just that, base- subterranean and simmering, dirt and blood, grief and desire and memory.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Every perfume is made of top, middle, and base notes. Top notes are light, middle notes last longer, base notes last longest. A good perfume has all three, but they have to be in the proper proportions."
The sentences washed over me in a wave of technicalities, but I could feel what she was talking about. It had happened with every scent-paper I'd smelled, the fragrance shifting, telling a story that deepened even as it disappeared. Even nature was that way, if you thought about it- the bright green of the trees giving way to the dark and complicated dirt beneath, the ocean holding the scent of death under all that life.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“I think one of the most fascinating things about perfumes is how they change with each person’s skin chemistry. I’ve always thought of them as verbs, not nouns. Truth, I’ve found, is much the same.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“It's amazing how easily we can cast ourselves in the role of hero.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Cinnabar- orange blossom, clove, lily, a touch of patchouli." She ticked the ingredients off. "That woman picked her perfume in college in 1978, and she's worn it ever since." She looked over at me and smiled. "She thinks it defines her. She's right. And that one." She nodded toward a woman standing by the leather boots in the shoe department. "Roses and gin, one of those boutique perfumes. She likes the joke of it, but she's more traditional than she'll ever admit. I bet she has plenty of fantasies she never acts on."
It was like the game I used to play, back when I read the bedsheets in the cottages at the cove, tried to figure out who the guests were, what they wanted.
As we started up the escalator, a woman in her midsixties passed us going down, trailing a wake of fresh oranges behind her.
"Did you know," Victoria said over her shoulder, "that if you put men in a room with just the faintest smell of grapefruit, they tend to think the women around them are six or seven years younger than they actually are?”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“It was filled with a dark paste, rather than liquid. I unscrewed the cap. The smell rolled toward me, and I reared back. I could almost hear growling, the pop of a bone socket.
"Civet," Claudia said, unfazed. "It takes a strong stomach to smell an animalic base note straight, don't you think? But a drop or two, down there in the bottom of a perfume? It sends that other message. Death and sex- that's what perfume's all about. You'll understand when you're older."
I stared back at her. I knew about death. I knew about sex. I didn't need her to tell me.
She held out another bottle, her expression bland. "Jasmine."
I was cautious this time, barely sniffing the contents, but the smell was a relief- sweet, white, and creamy, almost euphoric. I felt as if I were floating in it.
Just as I was about to put the bottle down, though, I caught a whiff of something else in the background, something narcotic and sticky. I inhaled more deeply, trying to pin it down.
"You like it," Claudia said. For the first time, she seemed pleased with me. "Do you know what that is, that note you're searching for?"
I shook my head. It was right there, but in that cool, blank room, I couldn't quite name it.
"It's shit," Claudia said. She smiled, slow and lazy. "Technically, the molecule's called indole, but a rose by any other name...”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Foragers feast," my father would say, and we'd set out into the woods, cedar bark baskets in our hands. In the summer, we harvested bright red huckleberries, and salal berries so dark blue they looked like night in your hand. In the fall, we found mushrooms hiding under the trees- I was captivated by the convoluted morels, each one a labyrinth of nooks and crannies.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“It made no sense to me. Scents were like rain, or birds. They left and came back. They told you their own stories, letting you know when the tide was low or the oatmeal was done cooking or the apple trees were getting ready to bloom. But they never stayed.
Even as a young child, however, I understood that those scent-papers were different, magical somehow. They held entire worlds. I could recognize bits of them- the smell of a fruit, but one more full and sweet than anything I had ever tasted. Or an animal, lazier than any I had ever met. Many of the scents were utterly foreign, however- sharp and fast, smooth and unsettling.
I wanted to dive into those worlds; I wanted to understand what made their smells. Even more than that, I wanted to be Jack the Scent Hunter, the hero of my father's stories, flying through the canopies of dripping jungles and climbing to the tops of mountains, all to catch the fragrance of one tiny flower.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“It felt as if my whole life had been shaped by things people wouldn't say.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“A signature scent is a brand,” she said. “It works fabulously for helping people make emotional connections with places, but if a person wears the same perfume all the time, you risk muddying the memories.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Back before there was time, I lived with my father on an island, tucked away in an endless archipelago that reached up out of the cold salt water, hungry for air.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“Maybe the story was better without the real details. Fairy tales often are.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“If you want to work with genius, you usually aren’t signing up for easy.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“We'll all choose a good story over the truth any day.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“I loved watching Fisher change the atmosphere around him. Everyone else thought it was magic, but I knew better. In the end, it wasn’t the flavors or the alcohol that made people relax—it was the experience of being seen and understood.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper

“I remember the way the rain seemed to talk to the roof as I fell asleep, and how the fire would snap and tell it to be quiet.”
― Erica Bauermeister, The Scent Keeper