Thomas Harris Quotes - Page 3

When you feel strain, keep your mouth shut if you can.

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.

Gratitude’s got a short half-life, Clarice.

Because it's his bad luck to be the best.

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

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

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

I found, and find, the scrutiny of Dr. Lecter uncomfortable, intrusive, like the humming of your thoughts when they x-ray your head.

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

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

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?

Good-bye Clarice. Will you let me know if ever the lambs stop screaming?" "Yes." Pembry was taking her arm. It was go or fight him. "Yes," she said. "I'll tell you." "Do you promise?""Yes.

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

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

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.

Intense fear comes in waves; the body can't stand it for long at a time.

I love myself that much and I will never apologize to you.

What do you look at while you’re making up your mind? Ours is not a reflective culture, we do no raise our eyes up to the hills. Most of the time we decide the critical things while looking at the linoleum floor of an institutional corridor, or whispering hurriedly in a waiting room with a television blatting nonsense.

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

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.

When Will Graham could open his right eye, he saw the clock and knew where he was- an intensive-care unit. He knew to watch the clock. Its movement assured him that this was passing, would pass. That's what it was there for.

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

Spaces devoted to Hannibal Lecter’s earliest years differ from the other archives in being incomplete. Some are static scenes, fragmentary, like painted attic shards held together by blank plaster. Other rooms hold sound and motion, great snakes wrestling and heaving in the dark and lit in flashes. Pleas and screaming fill some places on the grounds where Hannibal himself cannot go. But the corridors do not echo screaming, and there is music if you like.

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

I'll confess it is pleasant to look at you asleep. You're quite beautiful, Clarice.