Thomas Harris - The Silence of the Lambs (1988)

17 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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
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
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
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
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
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
Said by Dr Hannibal Lecter:
I do wish we could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner.

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

Thomas Harris
I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.

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

Thomas Harris
And your dinner for the orchestra officials." "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
Over this odd world, this half the world that's dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears.

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

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

Thomas Harris