>"Can language ever capture the mysterious world of smells?"

“Talking about smells can feel a little like talking about dreams—often tedious, rarely satisfying. The olfactory world is more private than we may think: even when we share space, such as a particularly ripe subway car, one commuter may describe eau d’armpit as sweet Gorgonzola cheese, another will detect rotting pumpkin, and a third a barnyardy, cayenne tang.”

“The cozy relationships between natural secretions and savory foods, or accidental emissions and eros, are well known to anyone who has nuzzled the dirty scalp of a loved one, but McGee lays out the molecular evidence for these desires. We might like to think we are most drawn to lovely, “clean” smells—laundry, linden blossoms, a eucalyptus breeze—but more often than not our greatest sensory delight comes from our most intimate, and most odiferous, nooks and crannies.”