“Problem-solving is hunting; it is savage pleasure and we are born to it.”

“We live in a primitive time—don’t we, Will?—neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.”

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

“What does he do, Clarice? What is the first and principal thing he does, what need does he serve by killing? He covets. How do we begin to covet? We begin by coveting what we see every day.”

“In the Green Machine there is no mercy; we make mercy, manufacture it in parts that have overgrown our basic reptile brain. There is no murder. We make murder, and it matters only to us.”

“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.”

“We rarely get to prepare ourselves in meadows or on graveled walks; we do it on short notice in places without windows, hospital corridors, rooms like this lounge with its cracked plastic sofa and Cinzano ashtrays, where the cafe curtains cover blank concrete. In rooms like this, with so little time, we prepare our gestures, get them by heart so we can do them when we're frightened in the face of Doom.”