Quotes from Thomas Harris

He watched her in the aisles: Molly, his pretty baseball wife, with her ceaseless vigilance for lumps, her insistence on quarterly medical check-ups for him and Willy, her controlled fear of the dark; her hard-bought knowledge that time is luck. She knew the value of their days. She could hold a moment by its stem. She had taught him to relish.

Starling, I have to retire in two years. If I find Jimmy Hoffa and the Tylenol killer I still have to hang it up. It's not a consideration.

Graham loved the way she turned her head, artlessly giving him her less perfect profile. He could see the pulse in her throat, and remembered suddenly and completely the taste of salt on her skin.

Graham climbed out a window onto the porch roof and sat on the gritty shingles. He hugged his knees, his damp shirt pressed cold across his back, and snorted the smell of slaughter out of his nose.

It occurred to Starling how much Roden would benefit from an elbow smash in the hinge of his jaw.

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

He was numb and empty and he drank two fingers of whiskey from his bathroom glass before he lay down. The darkness pressed too closely on him. He turned on the bathroom light and went back to bed. He pretended Molly was in the bathroom brushing her hair.

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

Silence and no lambs screaming.

Crawford began to underline. "If you assume when I send you on a job, Starling, you can make an ass out of u and me both.

One other thing," Commissioner Lewis said. The detectives sank back in their seats. "I have heard officers in this command referring to the killer as the 'Tooth Fairy.' I don't care what you call him among yourselves, I realize you have to call him something. But I had better not hear any police officer refer to him as the Tooth Fairy in public. It sounds flippant. Neither will you use that name on any internal memoranda.

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[...]He'll let you have Hobbs. He won't begrudge you one measly murder.

I inked up Lombard and all his Merry Men, major case prints whether they said they had touched her or not. They're scrubbing their hands and bitching now.

Since the partial answer to his prayer, Hannibal Lecter had not been bothered by any considerations of deity, other than to recognize how his own modest predation paled beside those of God, who is in irony matchless and in wanton malice beyond measure.

She delivered the paper to the night duty officer and fell into her grateful bed, the voices of the day still whispering, softer than Mapp's breathing across the room. On the swarming dark she saw the moth's wise little face. Those glowing eyes had looked at Buffalo Bill. Out of the cosmic hangover the Smithsonian leaves came her last thought and a coda for her day: Over this odd world, this half of the world that's dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears.

I'm not sure you get wiser as you get older, Starling, but you do learn to dodge a certain amount of hell. We can dodge some right there.

She wondered if men actually regard that kind of manipulation as subtle.

Qué me dice, Starling? —Digo que maldita sea, señor Crawford. ¿Qué dice usted?

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.

Es curioso advertir con qué eficacia operan las cosas cuando uno las reconoce. Es curioso observar hasta qué punto es incómodo el regalo del mando.

in the absolute dark she could hear the tiny clicks her eyes made when she blinked.

Starling se preguntó si al pensar en las mujeres las consideraba «pieles», igual que algunos cretinos que suelen llamarlas «coños».

A police station is a damn poor place to question anybody that you don't need to scare.

Your agency called this office and got me assigned to help you on this raid. I gave Evelda Drumgo two chances to surrender. She was holding a MAC 10 under the baby blanket. She had already shot John Brigham. I wish she had given up. She didn't. She shot me. I shot her. She's dead. You might want to check your tape counter right