Quotes from 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.

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

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.

It occurred to Dr. Lecter in the moment that with all his knowledge and intrusion, he could never entirely predict her, or own her at all. He could feed the caterpillar, he could whisper through the chrysalis; what hatched out followed its own nature and was beyond him. He wondered if she had the .45 on her leg beneath the gown. Clarice Starling smiled at him then, the cabochons caught the firelight and the monster was lost in self-congratulation at his own exquisite taste and cunning.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

He was numb except for dreading the loss of numbness.

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

Occasionally, on purpose, Dr. Lecter drops a teacup to shatter on the floor. He is satisfied when it does not gather itself together. For many months now, he has not seen Mischa in his dreams. Someday perhaps a cup will come together. Or somewhere Starling may hear a crossbow string and come to some unwilled awakening, if indeed she even sleeps.

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.

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

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

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

We rarely get to prepare ourselves in meadows or on graveled walks; we do it on short notice in places without windows, hospital corridors, rooms like this lounge with its cracked plastic sofa and Cinzano ashtrays, where the cafe curtains cover blank concrete. In rooms like this, with so little time, we prepare our gestures, get them by heart so we can do them when we're frightened in the face of Doom.