The Perfume Thief Quotes

“The fact of the matter is, so many of my wealthy clientele who hired me to steal never understood what was truly worth having. They were like the fisherman’s wife in the old fairy tale; they didn’t care what they got, they just wanted more. The perfect clients, the rare ones, were those who listened to me, who let me seduce them with the fable of poetry of fine essence. They believed me. I stole for them what I wanted to take. They recognized that scent should ghost away at the first dab, that all you’d need was to breathe it in once, let it move and inspire. You don’t wear perfume, you interpret it. You apply it. It shouldn’t matter whether anyone knows you wear anything at all.”
― Timothy Schaffert, The Perfume Thief

“Every story of caution I ever tell him he interprets as romance.”
― Timothy Schaffert, The Perfume Thief

“We’re always wrong if we think we've done enough. In times like these.”
― Timothy Schaffert, The Perfume Thief

“naive. Childish. From then on, butterflies mocked me. I didn’t thieve a single thing in my travels with the lepidopterist, though I made myself useful by negotiating with guides and hoteliers on the prices of donkeys and hammocks. I typed reports on typewriters that weighed half a ton, in Ceylon, in Singapore, in Trinidad. And”
― Timothy Schaffert, The Perfume Thief

“olfactory club,” an international cabal of sensualists.”
― Timothy Schaffert, The Perfume Thief

“Sometimes the right scent is the one that seems all wrong. Sometimes a woman goes into a perfume shop seeking adaptation. Or metamorphosis. Or an outright lie.

if you can convince a client just a little bit, he'll convince himself the rest of the way. He wants so much to believe. Faith. It's vital in both thievery and perfume.

Perfume was the most exquisite fraud of all - a pretty little bottle of cheap fixings and alcohol that you sold for at least triple its worth.”
― Timothy Schaffert, The Perfume Thief

“Every day I carry the weight of your absence”
The Perfume Thief”
― Timothy Schaffert, The Perfume Thief

“I like to imagine the war will end soon, and people who've lost their homes will return to Paris, to stroll through Greenspoon's. This one, they'll say, touching the black scar on the piano lid from where an uncle rested his cigarette that day, when he sat down to accompany the girls' singing. And this one, they'll say, knowing a china horse by the chip in its hoof. They'll know a silver teapot by a dent in its spout. A fur coat by a rip in its lining. A wristwatch by a scratch in its glass. A doll by its torn dress. They'll be newly grateful for all the old flaws, for the damage that left these precious things overlooked and unbought and distinctly their own.”
― Timothy Schaffert, The Perfume Thief