Thomas Harris

“In making friends, she was wary of people who foster dependency and feed on it. She had been involved with a few--the blind attract them, and they are the enemy.”

“In her way, she was a hard one. Faith in any sort of natural justice was nothing but a night light; she knew of that. Whatever she did, she would end the same way with everyone does: flat on her back with a tube in her nose, wondering, "Is this all?”

“Show Dr. Princi your teeth. That's right, let's see 'em all. Christ, Sparks, is that your tongue or are you swallowing a squirrel? Keep moving -”

“A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone. Go back to school, little Starling.”

“Did you ever think, Clarice, why the Philistines don't understand you? It's because you are the answer to Samson's riddle. You are the honey in the lion.”

“The advantage of beating a mute is he can't tell on you.”

“It occured to Starling how much Roden would benefit from an elbow smash in the hinge of his jaw.”

“And your dinner for the orchestra officials.""Haven't you ever had people coming over and no time to shop? You have to make do with what's in the fridge, Clarice. May I call you Clarice?”

“Back at his chair he cannot remember what he was reading. He feels the books beside him to find the one that is warm.”

“The very air had screams smeared on it. He flinched from the noise in this silent room.”

“It's fear, Jack. The man deals with a huge amount of fear.'Because he got hurt?'No, not entirely. Fear comes with imagination, it's a penalty, it's the price of imagination.”

“It's hard to have anything isn't it? Rare to get it, hard to keep it. This is a damn slippery planet.”

“I am the dragon, and you call me insane.”

“There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named—the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.”

“Over this odd world, this half the world that's dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears.”

“I'm going to cut you loose. With all due respect, Doctor, if you fuck with me I'll shoot you dead, here and now. Do you understand that?"- Clarice"Perfectly."- Hannibal Lecter "Do right and you'll live through this." -Clarice”

“On a related subject, Signore Pazzi, I must confess to you: I'm giving serious thought to eating your wife.”

“I'm giving serious thought into eating yor wife” - Hannibal Lecter”

“You would think such a day would tremble to begin . . .”

“Nothing made me happen. I happened.”

“We can only learn so much and live.”

“It rubs the lotion on its skin. It does this whenever it is told. ”

“Lecter is so lucid, so perceptive; he's trained in psychiatry... and he's a mass murderer.”

“How seldom we recognize the sound when the bolt of our fate slides home.”

“Ready when you are Sergeant Pempbry.”

“Hello Clarice...”

“When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help.”

“I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti”

“I'm doing one of three things: I'm writing. I'm staring out the window. Or I'm writhing on the floor.”

“She didn't give a damn about some of them, but she had grown to learn that inattention can be a stratagem to avoid pain, and that it is often misread as shallowness and indifference.”

“I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he's up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.”

“They sat in a row on the couches and in wheelchairs listening to the radio, their faded eyes fixed on the fish or on nothing or something they saw a long time ago.Francis would always remember the shuffle of feet on linoleum in the hot and buzzing day, and the smell of stewed tomatoes and cabbage from the kitchen, the smell of old people like meat wrappers dried in the sun, and always the radio.”