Thomas Harris Quotes

I have no interest in understanding sheep, only eating them.

And be grateful. Our scars have the power to remind us that the past was real.

Human emotions are a gift from our animal ancestors. Cruelty is a gift humanity has given itself.

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

You will not persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity.

Whenever feasible, one should always try to eat the rude.

You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.

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.

The tragedy is not to die, but to be wasted.

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

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

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

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

Nothing made me happen. I happened.

Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn't it?

We can only learn so much and live.

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

It's hard... to shake off something that's already under your skin.

Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.

One can only see what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind.

Fear comes with imagination, it’s a penalty, it’s the price of imagination.

Hannibal Lecter: 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.

He sees very clearly - he damn sure sees through me. It's hard to accept that someone can understand you without wishing you well. At Starling's age it hadn't happened to her much.

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

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

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.

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.

Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.

Writing novels is the hardest thing I've ever done, including digging irrigation ditches.

The worm that destroys you is the temptation to agree with your critics, to get their approval.

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

You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home.

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.

Shiloh isn’t haunted – men are haunted. Shiloh doesn’t care.

He was numb except for dreading the loss of numbness.

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

… It is not healing to see your childhood home, but it helps you measure whether you are broken, and how and why, assuming you want to know.

But the face on the pillow, rosy in the firelight, is certainly that of Clarice Starling, and she sleeps deeply, sweetly, in the silence of the lambs.

The most stable elements, Clarice, appear in the middle of the periodic table, roughly between iron and silver. Between iron and silver. I think that is appropriate for you.

Life's too slippery for books, Clarice; anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives.

Hannibal at eighteen was rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust, but he only half-listened to the climax. He was watching and breathing Lady Murasaki...

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.

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

God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again.

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

He moves smoothly and slowly, carrying his concentration like a brimming cup.

There is no murder. We make murder, and it matters only to us.

Ready when you are, Sergeant Pempbry.

You cant reduce me to a set of influences.

I would not have had that happen to you. Discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me.