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...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
Let's do, let's get some handles. I don't know why I'm talking about this stuff. Look, I love you and I miss you and you're doing the right thing. It's costing you too, I know that. I'm here and I'll be here whenever you come home, or I'll meet you anywhere, anytime. That's what. -- Thomas Harris
God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again. -- 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
The lambs will stop for now. But, Clarice, you judge yourself with all the mercy of the dungeon scales at Threave; you'll have to earn it again and again, the blessed silence. Because it's the plight that drives you, seeing the plight, and the plight will not end, ever. -- Thomas Harris
Are you looking for sympathy? You'll find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis -- 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
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
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
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
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
Dr. Lecter took off Krendler's runner's headband as you would remove the rubber band from a tin of caviar. -- 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
Two things to begin with. First, we go on the premise that Dr. Lecter really knows something concrete. second, we remember that Lecter looks only for the fun. Never forget fun. -- Thomas Harris
But when Krendler's volume became intrusive, Dr. Lecter retrieved his crossbow from a corner. -- 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
Who's the subject?"
"The psychiatrist - Dr. Hannibal Lecter," Crawford said.
A brief silence follows the name, always, in any civilized gathering. -- Thomas Harris
He did it because he liked it. Still does. Dr. Lecter is not crazy, in any common way we think of being crazy. He did some hideous things because he enjoyed them. But he can function perfectly when he wants to. -- Thomas Harris
Far beneath the rusty Baltimore dawn, stirrings in the maximum security ward. Down where it is never dark the tormented sense beginning day as oysters in a barrel open to their lost tide. God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again and the ravers cleared their throats. -- Thomas Harris
A week later he was working for the Tattler. -- Thomas Harris
She was charming way a cub is charming, a small cub that will grow up to be like one of the big cats. One you can't play with later -- Thomas Harris
You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home. -- 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
You would think such a day would tremble to begin ... -- 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
I would not have had that happen to you. Discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me. -- Thomas Harris
Avarice is not unknown in Italy, and Rinaldo Pazzi had imbibed plenty with his native air. But his natural acquisitiveness and ambition had been whetted in America, where every influence is felt more quickly, including the death of Jehovah and the incumbency of Mammon. When -- 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
I thank God for what happened," Verger said. "It was my salvation. Have you accepted Jesus, Miss Starling? Do you have faith? -- 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
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
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
If I saw you everyday forever, I would remember this time. -- 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
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
Pachelbel's Canon filled the sun-drowned room where they learned each other and even then the fear flickered across him like an osprey's shadow: This is too good to live for long. -- Thomas Harris
Flog no one else with meat. -- Thomas Harris
Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn't it? -- 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
Did you ever think, Clarice, why the Philistines don't understand you? It's because you are the answer to Samson's riddle. You are the honey in the lion. -- Thomas Harris
Life's too slippery for books, Clarice; anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives. -- 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
I'll confess it is pleasant to look at you asleep. You're quite beautiful, Clarice. -- Thomas Harris
Gratitude's got a short half-life, Clarice. -- 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
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
Fear comes from the imagination, it's a penalty, it's the price for imagination -- 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
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
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
He lives down in a ribcage in the dry leaves of a heart. -- 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
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. -- Thomas Harris
The intimacy of the detail - why The Silence of the Lambs is quite possibly the Thriller Writer's bible. -- 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
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
Death and danger do not have to come with trappings. -- Thomas Harris
Curious how things can work on you even when you recognize them. -- 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
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
You'd better go now; I don't think Miggs could manage again so soon, even if he is crazy, do you? -- 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
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
I say what I mean. Would you like it better if I said 'I'm glad you find me so.' That would be a little fancier, and equally true. -- Thomas Harris
Bella, I love you, kid, he said in case she could hear. Fear brushed the walls of his chest, circling inside him like a bat in a house. Then he got hold of it. He wanted to get something for her, anything, but he did not want her to feel him let go of her hand. -- 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 making friends, she was wary of people who foster dependency and feed on it. She had been involved with a few
the blind attract them, and they are the enemy. -- Thomas Harris
It rubs the lotion on its skin. It does this whenever it is told. -- 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
He cleared his throat. "One good thing about the range, Starling, is there's no politics out there." "No?" "You were right to secure that garage up at Baltimore there. You worried about the TV? -- 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
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
Nothing made me happen. I happened. -- Thomas Harris
Writing novels is the hardest thing I've ever done, including digging irrigation ditches. -- Thomas Harris
On a related subject, Signore Pazzi, I must confess to you: I'm giving serious thought to eating your wife. -- Thomas Harris
Oh wrangling schools, that search what fire
Shall burn this world had none the wit
Unto this knowledge to aspire
That this her fever might be it?
I'm so sorry about Bella, Jack. -- Thomas Harris
The world will not be this way within the reach of my arm. -- 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
If he really Loved Grandmother, he should be the thing to be afraid of in the dark. -- Thomas Harris
It occured to Starling how much Roden would benefit from an elbow smash in the hinge of his jaw. -- 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
Barney was nearly through with his workout, cooling down on a bike, when he realized he was not alone in the room. -- 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
Variously weighted with lies, guns, and groceries, the three of them were a small and solemn troop. -- Thomas Harris
When you feel strain, keep your mouth shut if you can. -- 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
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
He liked the Leedses. He was sorry that he had been to the morgue. He thought the madman who visited them might have liked them too. But the madman would like them better the way they were now. -- Thomas Harris
I'm giving serious thought into eating yor wife - Hannibal Lecter -- Thomas Harris
When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help. -- 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
When you show the odd flash of contextual intelligence, I forget your generation can't read, Clarice.
Hannibal Lecter -- Thomas Harris
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. -- Thomas Harris
It's indignity you can't stand, Hannibal, you're like a cat that way. -- Thomas Harris
Every person is worth your time, Hannibal. If at first appearance a person seems dull, then look harder, look into him. -- Thomas Harris
Starling looked at Crawford steadily, but she was too still. "Hannibal the Cannibal," she said. -- Thomas Harris
Lecter is so lucid, so perceptive; he's trained in psychiatry ... and he's a mass murderer. -- Thomas Harris
I love myself that much and I will never apologize to you. -- 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
Footsteps out of the room. The side and rattle of a kitchen drawer. Lounds had covered many murders committed in kitchens where things are handy. Police reporting can change forever your view of kitchens ... -- 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
The advantage of beating a mute is he can't tell on you. -- Thomas Harris
I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti -- 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
You think nuts don't apply to the FBI? We get 'em all the time. A man in a Moe hairpiece applied in St. Louis last week. He had a bazooka, two rockets, and a bearskin shako in his golf bag." "Did you hire him? -- Thomas Harris
There is no murder. We make murder, and it matters only to us. -- Thomas Harris
The washing machine's rhythm was like a giant heartbeat, and the rush of its waters was what the unborn hear- our last memory of peace. -- Thomas Harris
He was numb except for dreading the loss of numbness. -- Thomas Harris
We can only learn so much and live. -- Thomas Harris
When you are writing a novel, you aren't making it up. The story is already there. You just have to find it. -- Thomas Harris
Sometimes Crawford's tone reminded Starling of the know-it-all caterpillar in Lewis Caroll. -- 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
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
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
When Will Graham could open his right eye, he saw the clock and knew where he was- an intensive-care unit. He knew to watch the clock. Its movement assured him that this was passing, would pass. That's what it was there for. -- 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
Problem-solving is hunting; it is savage pleasure and we are born to it. -- Thomas Harris
I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he's up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place. -- Thomas Harris
This was a holiday and killing Grentz was preferable to skiing. The -- Thomas Harris
Baby needs a new pair of shoes,' he said. 'My baby doesn't need any shoes. -- Thomas Harris
HOW DO you behave when you know the conventional honors are dross? -- Thomas Harris
Intense fear comes in waves; the body can't stand it for long at a time. -- 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
Hello Clarice... -- 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
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
He was a person who agreed with everything his victim said before he killed him. -- Thomas Harris
It was Krendler's nature to both appreciate Starling's leg and look for the hamstring. -- Thomas Harris
The enemy inside Graham agreed with any accusation. -- Thomas Harris
Glistened on the rope, almost level now. Das -- Thomas Harris
You didn't draw a freak. You drew a man with a freak on his back. Nothing wrong with you, kid. -- Thomas Harris
Ready when you are Sergeant Pempbry. -- 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
In the 1980's, the Golden Age of Terrorism, procedures ... -- Thomas Harris
Spoken like a Protestant. -- 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
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
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
Because it's his bad luck to be the best. -- Thomas Harris
Dr. Doemling, does he want to fuck her or kill her, or eat her, or what?' Mason asked, exhausting the possibilities he could see. 'Probably all three,' Dr. Doemling said. -- 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
Will Graham, the keenest hound ever to run in Crawford's pack, was a legend at the Academy; he was also a drunk in Florida now with a face that was hard to look at, they said. -- Thomas Harris
He moves smoothly and slowly, carrying his concentration like a brimming cup. -- 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
I'm not sure you get wiser as you get older, Starling, but you do learn to dodge a certain amount of hell. -- Thomas Harris
Don't think you can persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity. -- Thomas Harris
Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed. -- Thomas Harris
I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it. -- 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
One can only see what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind. -- 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
The damp floor of the Internet sprouted Lecter theories like toadstools and sightings of the doctor rivaled those of Elvis in number. -- Thomas Harris
Funerals often make us want sex - it's one in the eye for death. -- 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
Was that job offer you worked into the blessing? I never saw such tact. -- Thomas Harris
He was alone because he was Unique. -- Thomas Harris
How seldom we recognize the sound when the bolt of our fate slides home. -- Thomas Harris
The first step in the development of taste is to be willing to to credit your own opinion. -- Thomas Harris
It would be so nice to be wanted by someone with the courage to get his hat or stay as he damn pleased, and who gave her credit for the same. Someone who didn't worry about her. -- Thomas Harris
The very air had screams smeared on it. He flinched from the noise in this silent room. -- 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
The longing need to be noticed that is often miscalled ego. -- Thomas Harris
Sanity and apparent rationality are not the same, comrade. -- 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
When the fox hears a rabbit scream, he comes running, but not to help. -- Thomas Harris
Before his Becoming, he would not have dared any of this. Now he realized he could do anything. Anything. Anything. -- Thomas Harris
The tragedy is not to die, but to be wasted. -- Thomas Harris
Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences. -- Thomas Harris
When I couldn't speak I was not drawn into silence, silence captured me. -- 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
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
Which do you think, Commendatore? Bowels in or out? -- 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
The worm that destroys you is the temptation to agree with your critics, to get their approval. -- Thomas Harris
Over this odd world, this half the world that's dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears. -- 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
Silence can mock. -- Thomas Harris
He could see that he had too many flowers in the room, and must add more to make it come back right again. Too many flowers was too many, but way too many was just right. -- Thomas Harris
I expect most psychiatrists have a patient or two they'd like to refer to me. -- Thomas Harris
I am the dragon, and you call me insane. -- Thomas Harris
