A Quote by Georges Simenon

The place smelled of fairgrounds, of lazy crowds, of nights when you stayed out because you couldn't go to bed, and it smelled like New York, of its calm and brutal indifference.

Georges Simenon

Quote Topics

Because Bed Brutal Calm Crowds Go Indifference Lazy Like New New York Nights Out Place Stayed York

Quote Author

Georges Simenon
Belgian - Writer
February 13, 1903 - September 4, 1989

For a moment he could have sworn he smelled violets, which was very peculiar, since he had no idea what violets smelled like, except somehow he knew they smelled just like Lady Emma.

Susan Elizabeth Phillips

The place smelled like Sam -- or, I guess, he smelled like the store. Like ink and old building and something more leafy than coffee but less interesting than weed. It was all very ... erudite. I felt surrounded by conversations I had no interest in participating in.

Maggie Stiefvater

Woody Allen stayed so good because he never left New York. Howard Stern stayed so good because he never left New York - Mel Brooks when he just got out of New York was doing 'Blazing Saddles;' when he left New York he started doing stuff like 'Robin Hood Men In Tights' - he was in L.A. too long. He lost the edge.

Artie Lange

The smell of apple pies didn't quite fill the house, but it was there, a thread under everything else. It was kind of hard to take Christophe seriously when he smelled like baked goods. I wondered if other djampjir smelled like Hostess Twinkies and sniggered to myself.

Lilith Saintcrow

The wind smelled clean, like clean magazines. It smelled like invisible ink.

Sarah Schulman

Just like an alley in New York -like every alley in the world, apparently- it smelled like cat pee.

Cassandra Clare

I remember my childhood names for grasses and secret flowers. I remember where a toad may live and what time the birds awaken in the summer -- and what trees and seasons smelled like -- how people looked and walked and smelled even. The memory of odors is very rich.

John Steinbeck

When you chopped logs with the ax and they split open they smelled beautiful, like Christmas. But when you split someone's head open it smelled like abattoir and quite overpowered the scent of the wild lilacs you'd cut and brought into the house only this morning, which was already another life.

Kate Atkinson

He held the book up to his nose. It smelled like Old Spice talcum powder. Books that smelled that way were usually fun to read. He threw the book onto his bed and went to his suitcase. After rummaging about for awhile, he came up with a long, narrow box of chocolate-covered mints. He loved to eat candy while he read, and lots of his favorite books at home had brown smudges on the corners of the pages.

John Bellairs

He smelled cold water and cold intrepid green. Those early flowers smelled like cold water. Their fragrance was not the still perfume of high summer; it was the smell of cold, raw green.

Paul Harding

I’ve come in and out of America for… well, I’ve lived here for 15 years. And I’ve played here for nearly 30 years. On and off. But I’ve always played to my fan base. And I can come and do two or three nights in New York or two or three nights in L.A., and all that. But when I go away, nobody knows I’ve been gone. You know, I don’t get reviewed or anything like that. So that’s why I’ve come back and done a longer time in a smaller place, in New York. It’s always the people who live here that get a chance to know me.

Billy Connolly

It's me! It's me! It's always me! [Darren when asked who smelled so good at the MTV Live interview in New York]

Darren Hayes

He shifted over without comment, lifting the blankets, and I scrambled into the warm sheets beside him. He smelled like soap and sleep and bare skin. He smelled familiar. Not the deja vu familiar of Guy or Mel. Familiar like...the ache in your chest of homesickness, of longing for harbor after weeks of rough seas or craving a fire's warmth after snow--or wanting back something you should never have given away.

Josh Lanyon

It always smelled like it was raining outside, even if it wasn't, and you were in the only nice, dry, cosy place in the world.

J. D. Salinger

There may be something universal about idealizing the past, but I think it's taken to an absurd degree in New York, which is what I'm poking fun at. The hole-in-the-wall bars I went to in the 90s that smelled like sewage now enjoy legendary status, as if times were had there that could never be had anywhere else.