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394929a
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It smells terrible in here.' Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate.
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humour
writing
odors
stink
smells
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John Kennedy Toole |
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79e7f08
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"Okay," Annabeth said. "What exactly do you smell?" "Something bad," Tyson answered. "Great," Annabeth grumbled. "That clears it up."
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tyson
cyclops
smells
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Rick Riordan |
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b821028
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My mother, who would always buy her books new, hated it the vintage hardcovers with their cracked spines and threadbare cloth covers. True you couldn't go in there and buy the latest best seller, but when you held one of those volumes in your hands, you were leafing through another person'a life. Someone else had once loved that story, too. Someone else had carried that book in a backpack, devoured it over breakfast, mopped up that coffee stain at a Paris cafe, cried herself to sleep after that last chapter. The scent was distinctive: a slight damp mildew, a punch of dust. To me, it was the smell of history.
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history
smells
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Jodi Picoult |
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438a9e2
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But why is it that if you imagine a baby who smells of milk, for example, you can't help smiling? Why is there such an agreement around the world about what is or isn't a foul smell? Who decided what smells bad? Is it impossible that somewhere in this world there are people who, if they sat next to a homeless fellow they'd get the urge to snuggle up to him, but if they sat next to a baby they'd get an urge to kill it?
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people
life
homeless-people
smells
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Ryū Murakami |
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9a361ee
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You know Pastor, baking is a real art. Especially bread baking. There is something so divine about it. It is a pure alchemy. And all alchemical elements are there: flour that comes from the earth and represents material, water that you mix with flour to make the dough, air released by the yeast fermentation that makes dough rise, fire that bakes the bread. It is fantastic. And the aroma of hot bread released during baking is the most pleasant fragrance for our senses. Think about that for a moment, Pastor. Any food aroma that we like, no matter how much we like it, gets overwhelming after a while, and we open the kitchen windows and close kitchen doors so the smell doesn't get into the living room. Any smell, but the smell of freshly baked bread. Did you ever hear anybody complain about the smell of baked bread? Nobody, Pastor! Nobody. You hear people complaining about their neighbors frying fish, roasting pork, barbecuing sausages, but nobody ever complains about the smell of baked bread. And you know why? Because it is divine. It is magic - the magic of the craft.
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arts
bread
crafts
smells
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Stevan V. Nikolic |
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e7c8910
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"evening harmony behold the times when trembling on their stems the flowers evaporate like thuribles the sounds and scents turn in the evening cool; sad waltz, languid intoxication! the flowers evaporate like thuribles the viol quivers like a heart that's torn sad waltz, languid intoxication! the sky is sad like some memorial. the viol quivers like a heart that's torn a heart that hates the void perpetual! the sky is sad like some memorial the sun has drowned in it's vermillion a heart that hates the void perpetual recalls each glowing moment of times gone!
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evening-harmony
smells
memory
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Charles Baudelaire |
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4572621
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We humans will never know how meadows or mountains smell, but deer and horses and pigs do. Bando sniffs deeply and shakes his head. We were left out when it comes to smelling things, he says. I would love to be able to smell a mountain and follow my nose to it.
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smelling
smells
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Jean Craighead George |
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b6699d0
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"Back inside, I'm shown an antique cabinet in which members of the community, famous for their homegrown produce, dried herbs. The Oneida Community was an upstate tourist attraction right from the start, second, Valesky says, to Niagara Falls. I'm taking the same guided tour offered a hundred and fifty years ago to prim rubbernecks who came here to peep at sex fiends. I wonder how many of my vacationing forebears went home disappointed? They thought they were taking the train to Gomorrah but instead they got to watch herbs dry. Valesky opens a drawer in the herb cabinet so I can get a whiff. He mentions that back in the day, when one tourist was shown the cabinet she rudely asked her community-member guide, "What's that odor?" To which the guide replied, "Perhaps it's the odor of crushed selfishness." Valesky grins. "How about that for a utopian answer?" To my not particularly utopian nose, crushed selfishness smells a lot like cilantro."
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oneida
herbs
odor
selfishness
smells
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Sarah Vowell |
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28fcacc
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"It SMELLS ancient," - Dan Cahill"
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dan-cahill
jude-watson
nowhere-to-run
the-39-clues
unstoppable
smell
ancient
smells
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Jude Watson |
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4511039
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"Rognons de Veau a la Bordelaise is simplicity itself to make; no different, essentially, from Poulet Saute, and no different, especially, from Bifteck Saute Bercy. In fact, making it that night felt like falling into a time warp- I stood before the stove, melting butter and browning meat and smelling the smells of wine deglazing and shallots softening- but the dishes changed before my eyes, and I heard Julia warbling, "Boeuf Bourguignon is the same as Coq au Vin. You can use , you can use , you can use ...."
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french-food
julie-powell
kidneys
julia-child
smells
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Julie Powell |
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09cfff7
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It is stronge how smells can bring back vivid memories.
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smells
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Mary Balogh |
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415bceb
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A traditional house smelled of wood smoke, the earth, and of thatch; all good smells, the smell of life itself.
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home
smells
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Alexander McCall Smith |
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1113e90
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Not an hour after Olivia was found, Portia and her mother were in the family's ancient pickup truck, bumping along the dirt roads of backwater Texas until they came to her grandmother's cafe, a place that had been handed down through generations of Gram's ancestors. The Glass Kitchen. Portia loved how its whitewashed clapboard walls and green tin roof, giant yawning windows, and lattice entwined with purple wisteria made her think of doll houses and thatch-roofed cottages. Excited to see Gram, Portia jumped out of the old truck and followed her mother in through the front door. The melting-brown-sugar and buttery-cinnamon smells reminded her that The Glass Kitchen was not for play. It was real, a place where people came from miles around to eat and talk with Portia's grandmother.
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grandma
smells
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Linda Francis Lee |
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158b681
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Sweeping the dorm soon's it's empty, I'm after dust mice under his bed when I get a smell of something that makes me realize for the first time since I been in the hospital that the big dorm full of beds, sleeps forty grown men, has always been sticky with a thousand other smells - smells of germicide, zinc ointment, and foot powder, smell of piss and sour old-man manure, of Pablum and eyewash, of musty shorts and socks musty even when they're fresh back from the laundry, the stiff odor of starch in the linen, the acid stench of morning mouths, the banana smell of machine oil, and sometimes the smell of singed hair - but never before now, before he came in, the man smell of dust and dirt from the open fields, and sweat, and work.
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one-flew-over-the-cuckoo-s-nest
descriptive-prose
ken-kesey
odors
machismo
smells
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Ken Kesey |
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2c14f87
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"Elena opens the door and yanks me through the house, stopping only when we reach the backyard. She lets me go only to grab the microphone from the lead singer. "Paco!" she announces loudly. "Yeah, I'm talkin' to you," Elena says, pointing to Paco talking to a bunch of girls. "Next time you want to take a dump, do it in someone else's house." Paco's entourage of girls backs up and giggles, leaving him alone."
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paco
elena
embarrass
toilet
smells
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Simone Elkeles |