“A light wind blew through here that carried with it scents of sadness and loss, not recognizable odors but smells that corresponded to nothing, chimerical fragrances able to evoke melancholic memories.”

“My nostrils smell, but not to you. Oh, they have no odor, unless you count the scent of nostalgia, which is what they always smell like.”

“I don't like musty smells. I much prefer less definitive fragrances, like the scent of maybe.”

“In the midst of the heavy, hot fragrance of summer, and of the clean salty smell of the sea, there was the odor of wounded men, a sickly odor of blood and antiseptics which marked the zone of every military hospital. All Athens quickly took on that odor, as the wounded Greek soldiers were moved out of hospitals and piled into empty warehouses to make way for German wounded. Now every church, every empty lot, every school building in Athens is full of wounded, and on the pathways of Zappion, the park in the heart of Athens, bandaged men in makeshift wheel chairs are to be seen wherever one walks. Zappion is a profusion of flowers, heavy-scented luxurious flowers; but even the flower fragrance is not as strong as that of blood.”

“But it was smell that carried memory.”

“The fire. The odor of burning juniper is the sweetest fragrance on the face of the earth, in my honest judgment; I doubt if all the smoking censers of Dante's paradise could equal it. One breath of juniper smoke, like the perfume of sagebrush after rain, evokes in magical catalysis, like certain music, the space and light and clarity and piercing strangeness of the American West. Long may it burn.”