“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.”

“[T]here is no consensus in the psychiatric community that Dr. Lecter should be termed a man. He has long been regarded by his professional peers in psychiatry, many of whom fear his acid pen in the professional journals, as something entirely Other. For convenience, they term him “monster”.”

“I think fear keeps people in mundane lives. Fear of freedom, fear of loneliness; it's a powerful opium.”

“We routinely leave our small children in day care among strangers. At the same time, in our guilt we evince paranoia about strangers and foster fear in children.”

“Pachelbel’s Canon filled the sun-drowned room where they learned each other and even then the fear flickered across him like an osprey’s shadow: This is too good to live for long.”

“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.”

“Magical properties were attributed to it. Its brew was sipped on the steps of sacrificial temples; its ecstasies were fierce and terrible. Is this what he fears? Corruption by pleasure, the subtle transubstantiation of the flesh into a vessel for debauch?”