Thomas Harris Quotes
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God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again.
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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.
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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.
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In the vaults of our hearts and brains, danger waits. All the chambers are not lovely, light and high. There are holes in the floor of the mind, like those in a medieval dungeon floor - the stinking oubliettes, named for forgetting, bottle-shaped cells in solid rock with the trapdoor in the top. Nothing escapes from them quietly to ease us. A quake, some betrayal by our safeguards, and sparks of memory fire the noxious gases - things trapped for years fly free, ready to explode in pain and drive us to dangerous behavior.
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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.
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One can only see what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind.
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On a related subject, Signore Pazzi, I must confess to you: I'm giving serious thought to eating your wife.
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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.
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Ready when you are, Sergeant Pempbry.
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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.
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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.
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There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named -- the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.
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Gratitude’s got a short half-life, Clarice.
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I love myself that much and I will never apologize to you.
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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.
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I'm doing one of three things: I'm writing. I'm staring out the window. Or I'm writhing on the floor.
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Whenever feasible, one should always try to eat the rude.
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You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home.
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There is no murder. We make murder, and it matters only to us.
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The very air had screams smeared on it. He flinched from the noise in this silent room.