Thomas Harris citations

Page 2

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

“I am the dragon, and you call me insane.”

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

“I expect most psychiatrists have a patient or two they'd like to refer to me.”

“Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences.”

“… 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.”

“Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odor is trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid. Remember it, it's the smell of schizophrenia.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“In her way, she was a hard one. Faith in any sort of natural justice was nothing but a night light; she knew of that. Whatever she did, she would end the same way with everyone does: flat on her back with a tube in her nose, wondering, "Is this all?”

“I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it.”

“He was numb except for dreading the loss of numbness.”

“Don't think you can persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity.”

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

“Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be… But i expect you can see it too. Some of our stars are the same.”

“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.”

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