Thomas Harris > Quotes

“Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences. You've given up good and evil for behaviorism, Officer Starling. You've got everybody in moral dignity pants—nothing is ever anybody's fault. Look at me, Officer Starling? Can you stand to say I'm evil? Am I evil, Officer Starling?”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“Perception's a tool that's pointed on both ends.”
― Thomas Harris

“Blood and breath were only elements undergoing change to fuel his Radiance. Just as the source of light is burning.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“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.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“Lecter was very hot”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Gratitude has a short half-life”
― Thomas Harris

“I've no plans to call on you, Clarice. The world is more interesting with you in it.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“Fear comes with imagination, it's a penalty, it's the price of imagination.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“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: Hannibal Lecter, Book 1

“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.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“My heart hops at the sight of you, who taught my heart to sing.”
― Thomas Harris, HANNIBAL RISING

“If you are scorched earth, I will be warm rain.”
― Thomas Harris, Hannibal Rising

“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, Red Dragon: (Hannibal Lecter) by Thomas Harris

“Water flying, a mocking rainbow of God's Promise in the spray, sparkling banner over the work of His blind hammer.”
― Thomas Harris, Hannibal

“Have you seen blood in the moonlight, Will? It appears quite black.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“I'm not sure you get wiser as you get older, but you do learn to dodge a certain amount of hell.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“I think there's been a lot of bullshit about the way I think.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“If you believe you are beyond harm, will you go inside?”
― Thomas Harris, Hannibal

“Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences. You've given up good and evil for behaviorism, Officer Starling. You've got everybody in moral dignity pants--nothing is ever anybody's fault. Look at me, Officer Starling. Can you stand to say I'm evil? Am I evil, Officer Starling?”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“He viewed his own mentality as grotesque but useful, like a chair made of antlers.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon