Thomas Harris Quotes & Sayings

With Reba, his only living woman, held with her in this one bubbleskin of time, he felt for the first time that it was all right: It was his life he was releasing, himself past all mortality that he was sending into her starry darkness, away from this pain planet, ringing harmonic distances away to peace and the promise of rest. — Thomas Harris

We assign a moment to decision, to dignify the process as a timely result of rational and conscious thought. But decisions are made of kneaded feelings; they are more often a lump than a sum. — Thomas Harris

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

I found, and find, the scrutiny of Dr. Lecter uncomfortable, intrusive, like the humming of your thoughts when they x-ray your head. — 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

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. — Thomas Harris

This was a holiday and killing Grentz was preferable to skiing. The — Thomas Harris

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

If you believe you are beyond harm, will you go inside? Will you enter this palace so prominent in blood and glory, follow your face through the web-spanned dark, toward the exquisite chiming of the clavier? The alarms cannot see us. The wet policeman lurking in the doorway cannot see us. Come ... — Thomas Harris

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

Because it's his bad luck to be the best. — 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

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

You still wake up sometimes, don't you? Wake up in the iron dark with the lambs screaming?" "Sometimes." "Do you think if you caught Buffalo Bill yourself and if you made Catherine all right, you could make the lambs stop screaming, do you think they'd be all right too and you wouldn't wake up again in the dark and hear the lambs screaming? Clarice?" "Yes. I don't know. Maybe." "Thank you, Clarice." Dr. Lecter seemed oddly at peace. — Thomas Harris

Baby needs a new pair of shoes,' he said. 'My baby doesn't need any shoes. — Thomas Harris

I can tell him what you've said." "He'll ignore it. And Buffalo Bill will go on and on. Wait until he scalps one and see how you like it. Ummmm ... I'll tell you one thing about Buffalo Bill without ever seeing the case, and years from now when they catch him, if they ever do, you'll see that I was right and I could have helped. I could have saved lives. Clarice? — 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

He saw the fireball coming, bouncing on the potholes, trailing smoke and sparks and the flames blown back like wings, disjointed reflections leaping along the shop windows. It veered, struck a parked car and overturned in front of the building, one wheel spinning and flames through the spokes, blazing arms rising in the fighting posture of the burned. — Thomas Harris

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

Do you know how you caught me, Will?'
'Good-bye, Dr. Lecter. You can leave messages for me at the number on the file.' Graham walked away.
'Do you know how you caught me?'
Graham was out of Lecter's sight now, and he walked faster toward the far steel door.
'The reason you caught me is that we're just alike' was the last thing Graham heard as the steel door closed behind him. — Thomas Harris

Who are you anyway?" Krendler said. "You're not Starling. You've got the spot on your face, but you're not Starling. — Thomas Harris

He follows several trains of thought at once, without distraction from any, and one of the trains is always for his own amusement. — Thomas Harris

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

One New Orleans officer who served with Graham commented, Well, you can call him retired, but the feds like to know he's around. It's like having a king snake under the house. They may not see him much, but it's nice to know he's there to eat the moccasins. — 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

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

Crawford was home for a month from the hospital, the chest pains came again in the night. Instead of calling an ambulance and going through it all again, he chose simply to roll over to the solace of his late wife's side of the bed. — Thomas Harris

When you show the odd flash of contextual intelligence, I forget your generation can't read, Clarice.
Hannibal Lecter — Thomas Harris

Sure, a surgeon can stand to look at a mutilated body," Crawford said, crumpling his cup and stepping on the pedal of the covered wastebasket. "But I don't think a doctor can stand to see a life wasted. — Thomas Harris

This is a frame. I think Mason Verger is trying to capture Dr. Lecter himself for purposes of personal revenge. I think he just missed him in Florence. I think Mr. Krendler may be in collusion with Verger and wants the FBI's effort against Dr. Lecter to work for Verger. I think Paul Krendler of the Department of Justice is making money out of this and I think he is willing to destroy me to do it. Mr. Krendler has behaved toward me before in an inappropriate manner and is acting now out of spite as well as financial self-interest. Only this week he called me a 'cornpone country pussy.' I would challenge Mr. Krendler before this body to take a lie detector test with me on these matters. I'm at your convenience. We could do it now. — Thomas Harris

I'm going to cut you loose. With all due respect, Doctor, if you fuck with me I'll shoot you dead, here and now. Do you understand that?"- Clarice

"Perfectly."- Hannibal Lecter

"Do right and you'll live through this." -Clarice — Thomas Harris

When you feel strain, keep your mouth shut if you can. — Thomas Harris

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

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

Death and danger do not have to come with trappings. — Thomas Harris

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. — Thomas Harris

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

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

Crawford, ever wary of desire, knew how badly he wanted to be wise. He knew that a middle-aged man can be so desperate for wisdom he may try to make some up, and how deadly that can be to a youngster who believes him. — Thomas Harris

Pictures ... flashed on her in sudden color, too much color, shocking color, the color that leaps out of black when lightning strikes at night. — 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

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

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

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

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

Spoken like a Protestant. — Thomas Harris

What, the Star Wars?" Mapp said. "If the aliens are trying to control Buffalo Bill's thoughts from another planet, Senator Martin can protect him - is that the pitch?" Starling nodded. "A lot of paranoid schizophrenics have that specific hallucination - alien control. If that's the way Bill's wired, maybe this approach could bring him out. It's a damn good shot, though, and she stood up there and fired it, didn't she? — Thomas Harris

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. — Thomas Harris

Ready when you are Sergeant Pempbry. — Thomas Harris

if she looked deeply where the dark sucks in the sparks, she might see something useful. She thought she might see glee. Thank — Thomas Harris

Haven't you ever had people coming over and no time to shop? You have to make do with what's in the fridge, Clarice. May I call you Clarice? — Thomas Harris

Life's too slippery for books, Clarice; anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives. — Thomas Harris

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

We live in a primitive time - don't we, Will? - neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books. — Thomas Harris

He could feed the caterpillar, he could whisper through the chrysalis; what hatched out followed its own nature and was beyond him. — 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

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

... 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. — Thomas Harris

Crawford saw that in this place Starling was heir to the granny women, to the wise women, the herb healers, the stalwart country women who have always done the needful, who keep the watch and when the watch is over, wash and dress the country dead. — Thomas Harris

They had me taking the fall for the raid, Mr. Crawford. For Evelda Drumgo's death, all of it. They were like hyenas and then suddenly it stopped and they slunk away. Something drove them off." "Maybe you have an angel, Starling." "Maybe I do. What did it cost you, Mr. Crawford? — Thomas Harris

He watched her in the aisles: Molly, his pretty baseball wife, with her ceaseless vigilance for lumps, her insistence on quarterly medical checkups 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. — Thomas Harris

Are you looking for sympathy? You'll find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis — Thomas Harris

...she shot him in the face as he slid down the door facing and she shot him in the face as he sat on the floor and she ran to him and shot him twice in the face as he sprawled against the wall, scalp down to his chin and his hair on fire. — 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

Some days you wake up changed. This was one for Starling, she could tell. What she had seen yesterday at the Potter Funeral Home had caused in her a small tectonic shift. Starling had studied psychology and criminology in a good school. In her life she had seen some of the hideously offhand ways in which the world breaks things. But she hadn't really known, and now she knew: sometimes the family of man produces, behind a human face, a mind whose pleasure is what lay on the porcelain table at Potter, West Virginia, in the room with the cabbage roses. Starling's first apprehension of that mind was worse than anything she could see on the autopsy scales. The knowledge would lie against her skin forever, — 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

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

He sees very clearly - he damn sure sees through me. It's hard to accept that someone can understand you without wishing you well. At Starling's age it hadn't happened to her much. — 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

Intense fear comes in waves; the body can't stand it for long at a time. — Thomas Harris

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

Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed. — 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

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

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

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

Funerals often make us want sex - it's one in the eye for death. — Thomas Harris

He looked up and saw her and his breath stopped in his throat. His hands stopped too, still spread above the keyboard. Harpsichord notes do not carry, and in the sudden quiet of the drawing room they both heard him take his next breath. — Thomas Harris

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

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? — Thomas Harris

No. You know - having to look. It's always bad, but you get so you can function anyway, as long as they're dead. The hospital, interviews, that's worse. You have to shake it off and keep on thinking. I don't believe I could do it now. I could make myself look, but I'd shut down the thinking. — Thomas Harris

In the 1980's, the Golden Age of Terrorism, procedures ... — 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

When I said that Mercy stood Within the borders of the wood, I meant the lenient beast with claws And bloody swift-dispatching jaws. - LAWRENCE SPINGARN — Thomas Harris

Before Me you are a slug in the sun. You are privy to a great Becoming and you recognize nothing. You are an ant in the after-birth.
It is in your nature to do one thing correctly: before Me you rightly tremble. Fear is not what you owe Me, Lounds, you and the other pismires. You owe Me awe. — 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 moves smoothly and slowly, carrying his concentration like a brimming cup. — Thomas Harris

Almost every place has a moment of the day, an angle and intensity of light, in which it looks its best. When you're stuck someplace, you learn that time and you look forward to it. — Thomas Harris

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

Barney did not reply. He looked at Krendler as though the left and right hemispheres of Krendler's brain were two dogs stuck together. — Thomas Harris

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

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. — Thomas Harris

Flog no one else with meat. — 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

He lives down in a ribcage in the dry leaves of a heart. — Thomas Harris