Thomas Harris Quotes - Page 2

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Before Me you are a slug in the sun. You are privy to a great Becoming and you recognize nothing. You are an ant in the after-birth.It is in your nature to do one thing correctly: before Me you rightly tremble. Fear is not what you owe Me, Lounds, you and the other pismires. You owe Me awe.

Allegra Pazzi: Dr. Fell, do you believe a man could become so obsessed with a woman, from a single encounter? Hannibal Lecter: Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for her and find nourishment in the very sight of her? I think so. But would she see through the bars of his plight and ache for him?

Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.

I am the dragon, and you call me insane.

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

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.

One quality in a person doesn't rule out any other quality. They can exist side by side, good and terrible. Socrates said it a lot better.

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

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.

… 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.

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 can only learn so much and live.

Evil's just destructive? Then storms are evil, if it's that simple. And we have fire, and there there's hail. Underwriters lump it all under 'Acts of God.

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

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

What he has in addition is pure empathy and projection,” Dr. Bloom said. “He can assume your point of view, or mine – and maybe some other points of view that scare and sicken him. It’s an uncomfortable gift, Jack. Perception’s a tool that’s pointed on both ends.

Let me tell you about my day. I get up at 8 o'clock in the morning. At 8:30 am, I leave the house and I arrive at my office at 8:37. I stay in the office until 2 o'clock in the afternoon. I get in my Porsche and I'm home at 2:03 because the one-way streets make it faster for me to drive. And between 8:36 am and 2 pm, I'm doing one of three things: I'm writing. I'm staring out the window. Or I'm writhing on the floor.