"I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti"
— Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs)

"When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help."
— Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs)

"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 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 (The Silence of the Lambs)

"How seldom we recognize the sound when the bolt of our fate slides home."
— 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 (Red Dragon)

"It rubs the lotion on its skin. It does this whenever it is told. "
— Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs)

""You would think such a day would tremble to begin . . .""
— Thomas Harris (Hannibal)

"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 (The Silence of the Lambs)

"'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 (Red Dragon)

"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 (Hannibal)

"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 (Red Dragon)

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

-Dr. Chilton
Red Dragon"
— Thomas Harris (Red Dragon)

"The advantage of beating a mute is he can't tell on you."
— Thomas Harris (Hannibal Rising)

""Ready when you are Sergeant Pempbry.""
— Thomas Harris (The Silence of the Lambs)