Kathleen Tessaro

she had a way of moving which was fluid and eminently watchable, and she knew how to dress simply so that these movements were emphasized

When her black eyes took you in, her capacity to stare unblinking, without any emotion, was both shocking and mesmerizing.

Almost everything offended her refined sensibility.

‘There is nothing more difficult than simplicity,’

rather than adapt to her surroundings, she transformed them.

The thick curtains let in only the dimmest fraction of light so that even during the day, her quarters had a smoky decadence about them, like a world suspended in a permanent night.

There is something wrong, deeply wrong, about an entire room of women who all smell the same

Perfume should tell a story – the story of who you are, who you might be, perhaps even of who you fear becoming . . . all of these things are possible.

And it conveys feelings and states of being that have no name, no language.

Its very ambiguity makes it truer than words because, unlike words, it can’t be manipulated or misunderstood.