Thomas Harris Quotes

I am the dragon, and you call me insane. ~ Thomas Harris

Problem solving is hunting. It's a savage pleasure and we're born to it. ~ Thomas Harris

Show Dr. Princi your teeth. That's right, let's see 'em all. Christ, Sparks, is that your tongue or are you swallowing a squirrel? Keep moving - ~ Thomas Harris

He came back to the car, long legs lifting high in the snow, and there was snow in his hair and on his eyelashes and I remembered that I love him. It felt like something breaking with a little pain and spilling warm. ~ Thomas Harris

Who's the subject?"
"The psychiatrist - Dr. Hannibal Lecter," Crawford said.
A brief silence follows the name, always, in any civilized gathering. ~ Thomas Harris

It was as though committing murders had purged him of lesser rudeness. Or perhaps, Starling thought, it excited him to see her marked in this particular way. She couldn't tell. The sparks in his eyes flew into his darkness like fireflies down a cave. ~ Thomas Harris

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. ~ Thomas Harris

You would think such a day would tremble to begin ... ~ Thomas Harris

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. ~ Thomas Harris

The enemy inside Graham agreed with any accusation. ~ Thomas Harris

These are probably dogs, ~ Thomas Harris

And then he realized that he loved the eagle better than the sheep and that he always would and that, because he did, because it was in him to do it, he could never be perfect in the sight of God. ~ Thomas Harris

Monsters know when they are recognized, just as bores do. ~ Thomas Harris

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. ~ Thomas Harris

They waited for the elevator. " Most people love butterflies and hate moth," he said. "But moths are more interesting - more engaging."
"They're destructive."
"Some are, a lot are, but they live in all kinds of ways. Just like we do." Silence for one floor.
"There's a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears," he offered. "That's all they eat or drink."
"What kind of tears? Whose tears?"
"The tears of large land mammals, about our size.
The old definition of moth was, 'anything that gradually, silently eats, consumes, or wages any other thing.'
It was a verb for destruction too ... ~ Thomas Harris

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. ~ Thomas Harris

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

Which do you think, Commendatore? Bowels in or out? ~ Thomas Harris

They tried sodium amytal on him three years ago trying to find out where he buried a Princeton student," Graham said. "He gave them a recipe for dip. ~ Thomas Harris

You said that I, who see more than you, am insane. I, who pushed the world so much further than you, am insane. I have dared more than you, I have pressed my unique seal so much deeper in the earth, where it will last longer than your dust ... you owe me awe. ~ Thomas Harris

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

Lecter sits in his armchair with a big pad of butcher paper doing calculations. The pages are filled with the symbols both of astrophysics and particle physics. There are repeated efforts with the symbols of string theory. The few mathematicians who could follow him might say his equations begin brilliantly and then decline, doomed by wishful thinking. Dr. Lecter wants time to reverse - no longer should increasing entropy mark the direction of time. He wants increasing order to point the way. ~ Thomas Harris

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

There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named
the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt. ~ Thomas Harris

Mischa, we take comfort in knowing there is no God. That you are not enslaved in Heaven, made to kiss God's ass forever. What you have is better than Paradise. You have blessed oblivion. I miss you every day. ~ Thomas Harris

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

I think it's easy to mistake understanding for empathy - we want empathy so badly. Maybe learning to make that distinction is part of growing up. It's hard and ugly to know somebody can understand you without even liking you. ~ Thomas Harris

Sometimes Crawford's tone reminded Starling of the know-it-all caterpillar in Lewis Caroll. ~ Thomas Harris

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. ~ Thomas Harris

They sat in a row on the couches and in wheelchairs listening to the radio, their faded eyes fixed on the fish or on nothing or something they saw a long time ago.
Francis would always remember the shuffle of feet on linoleum in the hot and buzzing day, and the smell of stewed tomatoes and cabbage from the kitchen, the smell of old people like meat wrappers dried in the sun, and always the radio. ~ Thomas Harris

They drew the line on dogs at the hospital and wouldn't let the dog in. A fireman, instructed to drop it off at the animal shelter, took it home with him instead. ~ Thomas Harris

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

Pity Catherine Martin won't ever see the sun again. The sun's a mattress fire her God died in, Clarice. ~ Thomas Harris

It's indignity you can't stand, Hannibal, you're like a cat that way. ~ Thomas Harris

He's a monster. I think of him as one of those pitiful things that are born in hospitals from time to time. They feed it, and keep it warm, but they don't put it on the machines and it dies. Lecter is the same way in his head, but he looks normal and nobody could tell. ~ Thomas Harris

Fear comes from the imagination, it's a penalty, it's the price for imagination ~ Thomas Harris

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

Dr. Fell, do you believe a man could become so obsessed with a woman, from a single encounter?
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? ~ Thomas Harris

The world will not be this way within the reach of my arm. ~ Thomas Harris

There's a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears," he offered. "That's all they eat or drink." "What kind of tears? Whose tears?" "The tears of large land mammals, about our size. ~ Thomas Harris

That there had to be a place in the world for Mischa, a prime place vacated for her, and I came to think, Clarice, that the best place in the world was yours. ~ Thomas Harris

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

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

Starling discovered that she had traded feeling frightened for feeling cheap. Of the two, she preferred feeling frightened. ~ Thomas Harris

If he really Loved Grandmother, he should be the thing to be afraid of in the dark. ~ Thomas Harris

Shiloh isn't haunted – men are haunted.
Shiloh doesn't care. ~ Thomas Harris

Don't think you can persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity. ~ Thomas Harris

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

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

Starling knew what the malicious Dr. Lecter would say, and it was true: she was afraid there was something tacky that Senator Martin saw in her, something cheap, something thief-like that Senator Martin reacted to. That Vanderbilt bitch.
Dr. Lecter would relish pointing out that class resentment, the buried anger that comes with mother's milk, was a factor too. Starling gave away nothing to any Martin in education, intelligence, drive, and certainly physical appearance, but still it was there and she knew it. ~ Thomas Harris

The intimacy of the detail - why The Silence of the Lambs is quite possibly the Thriller Writer's bible. ~ Thomas Harris

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 ... ~ Thomas Harris

Flog no one else with meat. ~ Thomas Harris

I read 'Red Dragon' back in high school. I love Thomas Harris' approach to the crime thriller that crossed over into horror in a way that nobody really tapped into. ~ Bryan Fuller

Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed. ~ Thomas Harris

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

Silence can mock. ~ Thomas Harris

I thank God for what happened," Verger said. "It was my salvation. Have you accepted Jesus, Miss Starling? Do you have faith? ~ Thomas Harris

it would hold among its molecules the vibrations of all the conversations ever held in its presence. All the exchanges, the petty irritations, the deadly revelations, the flat announcements of disaster, the grunts and poetry of love. Sit ~ Thomas Harris

Dr. Lecter, erect as a dancer and carrying Starling in his arms, came out from behind the gate, walked barefoot out of the barn, through the pigs. Dr. Lecter walked through the sea of tossing backs and bloodspray in the barn. ~ Thomas Harris

The pudgy one moved his bishop and immediately turned the beetle around and started it trudging back the other way. "If the beetle just cuts across the corner, is time up then?" Starling asked. "Of course time's up then," the pudgy one said loudly, without looking up. "Of course it's up then. How do you play? Do you make him cross the whole board? Who do you play against, a sloth? ~ Thomas Harris

This is the hardest time, Starling. Use this time and it will temper you. Now's the hardest test - not letting rage and frustration keep you from thinking. It's the core of whether you can command or not. Waste and stupidity will get you the worst. ~ Thomas Harris

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

Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation out of the mines Officer Starling. ~ Thomas Harris

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

But when Krendler's volume became intrusive, Dr. Lecter retrieved his crossbow from a corner. ~ Thomas Harris

The exposition of Atrocious Torture Instruments could not fail to appeal to a connoisseur of the worst in mankind. But the essence of the worst, the true asafoetida of the human spirit, is not found in the Iron Maiden or the whetted edge; Elemental Ugliness is found in the faces of the crowd. ~ Thomas Harris

I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it. ~ Thomas Harris

It was Krendler's nature to both appreciate Starling's leg and look for the hamstring. ~ Thomas Harris

Variously weighted with lies, guns, and groceries, the three of them were a small and solemn troop. ~ Thomas Harris

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. ~ Thomas Harris

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

She thought for an instant of her late parents. She wondered if they would be ashamed of her now - just that question, not its pertinence, no qualifications - the way we always ask it. ~ Thomas Harris

He snapped some icicles off a branch to make me a martini. He came back to the car, long legs lifting high in the snow, and there was snow in his hair and on his eyelashes and I remembered that I love him. It felt like something breaking with a little pain and spilling warm. I hope the parka ~ Thomas Harris

Graham had stared through the bars for about five seconds when Lecter opened his eyes and said, "That's the same atrocious aftershave you wore in court." "I keep getting it for Christmas. ~ Thomas Harris

Was that job offer you worked into the blessing? I never saw such tact. ~ Thomas Harris

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

This is the Death's-head Moth," he said. "That's nightshade she's sitting on - we're hoping she'll lay." The moth was wonderful and terrible to see, its large brown-black wings tented like a cloak, and on its wide furry back, the signature device that has struck fear in men for as long as men have come upon it suddenly in their happy gardens. The domed skull, a skull that is both skull and face, watching from its dark eyes, the cheekbones, the zygomatic arch traced exquisitely beside the eyes. "Acherontia styx," Pilcher said. "It's named for two rivers in Hell. Your man, he drops the bodies in a river every time - did I read that?" "Yes," Starling said. "Is it rare?" "In this part of the world it is. There aren't any at all in nature. ~ Thomas Harris

When you were so depressed after you shot Mr. Garrett Jacob Hobbs to death, it wasn't the act that got you down, was it? Really, didn't you feel so bad because killing him felt so good? Think about it, but don't worry about it. Why shouldn't it feel good? It must feel good to God - He does it all the time, and are we not made in His image? ~ Thomas Harris

[T]here is no consensus in the psychiatric community that Dr. Lecter should be termed a
man. He has long been regarded by his professional peers in psychiatry, many of whom
fear his acid pen in the professional journals, as something entirely Other. For
convenience, they term him "monster". ~ Thomas Harris

In the gathering gloom only his white Nike headband and his white Nike shoes and the white stripe down the side of his dark Nike running suit were visible, as though there were no man at all among the trademarks. ~ Thomas Harris

Killing somebody, even if you have to do it, it feels that bad?'
'Willy, it's one of the ugliest things in the world. ~ Thomas Harris

She wanted to go inside. She wanted to go in, wanting it as we want to jump from balconies, as the glint of the rails tempts us when we hear the approaching train. ~ Thomas Harris

We can only learn so much and live. ~ Thomas Harris

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

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. ~ Thomas Harris

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. ~ Thomas Harris

If I saw you everyday forever, I would remember this time. ~ Thomas Harris

We don't begin to covet with imagined things. Coveting is a very literal sin–we begin to covet with tangibles, we begin with what we see every day. ~ Thomas Harris

Hello Clarice... ~ Thomas Harris

WHEN STARLING was a child she moved from a clapboard house that groaned in the wind to the solid redbrick of the Lutheran Orphanage. ~ Thomas Harris

The emperor counsels simplicity. First principles. Of each particular thing, ask: What is it in itself, in its own constitution? What is its causal nature? ~ Thomas Harris

Here, he's resting on the examining table. Pulse seventy-two. Here, he grabs the nurse's head and pulls her down to him. Here, he is subdued by the attendant. He didn't resist, by the way, though the attendant dislocated his shoulder. Do you notice the strange thing? His pulse never got over eighty-five. Even when he tore out her tongue. ~ Thomas Harris

Jack Crawford heard the rhythm and syntax of his own speech in Graham's voice. He had heard Graham do that before, with other people. Often in intense conversation Graham took on the other person's speech patterns. At first, Crawford had thought he was doing it deliberately, that it was a gimmick to get the back-and-forth rhythm going.
Later Crawford realized that Graham did it involuntarily, that sometimes he tried to stop and couldn't. ~ Thomas Harris

Graham switched on the lights and bloodstains shouted at him from the walls, from the mattress and the floor. The very air had screams smeared on it. He flinched from the noise in this silent room full of dark stains drying.

Graham sat on the floor until his head was quiet. Still, still, be still. ~ Thomas Harris

A week later he was working for the Tattler. ~ Thomas Harris

Before his Becoming, he would not have dared any of this. Now he realized he could do anything. Anything. Anything. ~ Thomas Harris

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

He was a person who agreed with everything his victim said before he killed him. ~ Thomas Harris

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. ~ Thomas Harris