Thomas Harris citations

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

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

“Nothing made me happen. I happened.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“She didn't give a damn about some of them, but she had grown to learn that inattention can be a stratagem to avoid pain, and that it is often misread as shallowness and indifference.”

“Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.”

“Silence can mock.”

“We can only learn so much and live.”

“I'm not sure you get wiser as you get older, Starling, but you do learn to dodge a certain amount of hell.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“If I saw you everyday forever, I would remember this time.”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“He lives down in a ribcage in the dry leaves of a heart.”

“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.”

“You would think such a day would tremble to begin…”

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

“There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named—the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.”

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

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