I use these senses – touch, sight, feel and smell – as triggers that invite readers or propel them into the scene. The trick is not to make it obvious. I’ve written an entire chapter about this in my book, ‘The Successful Novelist.’ I’ve lectured about it extensively, but have yet to see many people pick up on it.
The most evocative food smell is American seaside food – tuna melts and cookie dough ice cream, or the British version, fish and chips and toffee apples.
I took the longest showers of my life after every time I visited Gramacho. It affects the personality of the catadores. They always dress really well, they’re very sharp, and when they go out they always wear a lot of perfume because they’re very conscious of the possibility of having the smell.
I look like a winner, I smell like a winner, so why not put it on the big screen?
Get excited and enthusiastic about you own dream. This excitement is like a forest fire – you can smell it, taste it, and see it from a mile away.
I love to smell like roses, literally all day!
In bitter almond oil, like in a great number of other substances that previously had been counted among the ‘aromatic compounds’ on behalf of their strong smell, a derivative of benzene is present. The special properties of benzene and its derivatives are caused by the typical arrangement of their carbon atoms.
My grandmother would start making her meat sauce at 7 in the morning on Sunday, and within five or six hours, that smell would be all through the house.
There was this sausage factory a block away from my childhood apartment. It didn’t smell nice, like chorizo or something; it was pretty foul. Just nasty. But that smell reminds me so much of my childhood because every morning when I was going to school, I would smell that.
It was so exciting to go to the record shop and buy a piece of vinyl and hold it, read the liner notes, look at the pictures. Even the smell of the vinyl.
If I really like the smell of something – a piece of tar or my goddaughter’s plastic doll – I put a tiny piece in a bottle with a label. I keep them in a fridge in my bathroom.
Wilshire Boulevard… It has no smell to it.
I visited the Pentagon a few days after September 11, and I still remember so vividly the smell of terror surrounding the entire building and complex. I was angry that such a brutal act of violence was committed against innocent people.
Try not thinking of peeling an orange. Try not imagining the juice running down your fingers, the soft inner part of the peel. The smell. Try and you can’t. The brain doesn’t process negatives.
Now, space has its own unique smell. So whenever a vehicle docks, or if guys are out doing a spacewalk, the smell of space when you open up the hatch is very distinct. It’s kind of like a burning-metal smell, if you can imagine what that would smell like.
If you’re a wounded company, the other companies that have been around for a hundred years will smell it, and they will take advantage of you in a heartbeat. It takes a long time to get back in fighting form.
When a baby comes you can smell two things: the smell of flesh, which smells like chicken soup, and the smell of lilies, the flower of another garden, the spiritual garden.
I was shocked to find that there were actually climate scientists who wouldn’t share the raw data, but would only share their conclusions in summary graphs that were used to prove their various theories about planet warming. In fact I began to smell something really bad, and the worse that smell got, the deeper I looked.
Life is full of beauty. Notice it. Notice the bumble bee, the small child, and the smiling faces. Smell the rain, and feel the wind. Live your life to the fullest potential, and fight for your dreams.
I danced six hours a day. My cross to bear is that my children have no interest in ballet. I think they could smell how much I wanted to put their hair in a bun.
I love the smell of a theater. The old rooms and the carpet and all that stuff. I love to tell stories. Even before I was doing music, I saw myself as a director. So most of my songs come in a play form, you know, where there are characters and stories, so I like to go beyond just the song sometimes.
What they smell isn’t the emotion of fear. What dogs can smell is the changes in a person’s skin that suggest fear to the dog, anxiety, the way your skin sweats, the amount of uric acid that suddenly pours out of your pores.
Criminals usually prey on weakness. They can smell it.
Right when I finish a workout, I feel pretty sexy. Even though I’m sweaty and I don’t smell like a rose, I feel strong. It does a lot for me mentally and physically.
I think sighted people let their eyes cheat them out of certain things. People who can see don’t have a great sense of smell because they don’t use it.
I love roses and I love the smell of them in my room.
Taste is one of the five senses, and the man who tells us with priggish pride that he does not care what he eats is merely boasting of his sad deficiency: he might as well be proud of being deaf or blind, or, owing to a perpetual cold in the head, of being devoid of the sense of smell.
There’s nothing like the smell of grilling flesh.
The smell of fuel, driving on the limit on the edge of sliding, it just gives you a lot of adrenaline.
I love the scents of winter! For me, it’s all about the feeling you get when you smell pumpkin spice, cinnamon, nutmeg, gingerbread and spruce.
I can smell bacon sizzling or chicken roasting and appreciate the aroma, but I don’t want to eat it.
There is a peculiar burning odor in the room, like explosives. the kitchen fills with smoke and the hot, sweet, ashy smell of scorched cookies. The war has begun.
In ‘A Bone in the Throat,’ he describes his protagonist and alter ego, the cook Tommy Pagano, as ‘darker, and not as tall as the chef, his hair stood up straight and spiky like a young Trotsky’s.’ He describes Little Italy with such verve, such flavor, that it is impossible not to smell the streets or taste the food.
It’s amazing the things that you cry at. I cry when I smell my son’s hair in the morning. We have a moment of peace and I’ll be like, ‘Ahhhh! How can you love this much?’
I love the smell of the Earth. I’m a good cook my friends say. I love cooking for my friends. So I’m totally the opposite of being evil. I think only if you’re a good person can you be very evil onscreen.
Many pilots of the time were the opinion that a fighter pilot in a closed cockpit was an impossible thing, because you should smell the enemy. You could smell them because of the oil they were burning.
The sense of smell in all dogs is their primary doorway to the world around them.
I don’t spend my time on farms. I don’t like the smell, to be honest.
I grew up to the smell of doughnuts, scones, pies, and bread.
Everyone is obsessed with air fresheners. We associate smell with disgust. But we’re all locked into the body; we can’t escape it.
When a herd of cattle see a strange object, they are not satisfied till each one has sniffed it; and the horse is cured of his fright at the robe, or the meal-bag, or other object, as soon as he can be induced to smell it. There is a great deal of speculation in the eye of an animal, but very little science.
My studio is not arty. It doesn’t smell of turpentine, and I’m not knee-high in paper.
Smell is so powerful, you know. My grannies would both bake things like shortbreads and cookies. I think whenever I smell those kinds of things it really takes me back to my childhood.
Keep it simple. Tell the truth. People can smell the truth.
The only things that smell good are fat and sugar. Tofu being boiled doesn’t smell good. Anything that smells good is fattening.
I used to go to Sheen High Street with my dad on a Saturday, and there was a butcher next door to the fishmonger. I hated the smell of the fishmonger, but I found the smell of the butcher’s much more appealing. And I liked the big knives. I thought it looked like a decent job.
If summer had one defining scent, it’d definitely be the smell of barbecue.
My favourite smell is horses. In fact, most of the time, I do smell like horses.
One of the things that you’re not really in control of – apart from everything – is your smell.
In Hollywood we acquire the finest novels in order to smell the leather bindings.
I wanted to create a line for women and men alike that would encourage them to embrace the harmony and divine balance of sensuality and spirituality within all of us. Forplai is an opportunity to not only smell good and feel good, but to also take time to connect with the heavens above and the god in you.
The sanitary and mechanical age we are now entering makes up for the mercy it grants to our sense of smell by the ferocity with which it assails our sense of hearing.
Sometimes smell can take you back to places.
On your journey, don’t forget to smell the flowers. Take time out to notice that you’re alive. You can only live in one day.
Every job is good if you do your best and work hard. A man who works hard stinks only to the ones that have nothing to do but smell.
Can anyone remember love? It’s like trying to summon up the smell of roses in a cellar. You might see a rose, but never the perfume.
I’m the opposite of someone like David Grossman, who knows how his characters walk, and how they smell. I don’t allow myself to imagine what mine look like at all. My sense of them comes from the inside. They remain, by necessity, physically vague in my mind.
