Cannibalism Quotes

“I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“A kiss is the beginning of cannibalism.”
― Georges Bataille

“But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals
Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .”
― Nick Cave

“I wonder if I could eat a child if I had the chance.'
'I doubt if I could cook one,' said Constance.”
― Shirley Jackson, We Have Always Lived in the Castle

“Experience declares that man is the only animal which devours his own kind; for I can apply no milder term to the governments of Europe, and to the general prey of the rich on the poor.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“I don't care how much you eat, Ender, self-cannibalism won't get you out of this school.”
― Orson Scott Card

“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 have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.”
― Jonathan Swift

“Shower while there were two dead bodies in the bathtub, and he was sane. He drilled holes in the heads of living people to make them his unresisting companions, and he was sane. He ate a bicep which he fried in a skillet, tenderised and sprinkled with sauce, and he was sane. For hours he lay with corpses, hugging them, cherishing them, and he was sane. He kept eleven assorted heads and skulls, and two complete skeletons, for eventual use in a home-made temple, and he was sane.”
― Brian Masters, The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer

“Imperialism creates the illusion of wealth as far as the masses are concerned. It usually serves to hide the fact that the ruling classes are gobbling up the natural resources of the home territory in an improvident manner and are otherwise utilizing the national wealth largely for their own purposes. Eventually the general public is called upon to pay for all of this, frequently after the military machine can no longer maintain external aggression.”
― Jack D. Forbes, Columbus and Other Cannibals: The Wétiko Disease of Exploitation, Imperialism, and Terrorism

“But if you eat this chap who's God,' said Llewelyn stoutly, 'how can it be horrible? If it's alright to eat God why is it horrible to eat Jim Whittle?'

'Because,' said Dymphna reasonably, ' if you eat God there's always plenty left. You can't eat God up because God just goes on and on and on and God can't ever be finished...”
― Anthony Burgess, The Wanting Seed

“Go to the meat market of a Saturday night and see the crowds of live bipeds staring up at the long rows of dead quadrupeds. Does not that sight take a tooth out of the cannibal's jaw? Cannibals? who is not a cannibal? I tell you it will be more tolerable for the Fejee that salted down a lean missionary in his cellar against a coming famine; it will be more tolerable for that provident Fejee, I say, in the day of judgement, than for thee, civilized and enlightened gourmand, who naliest geese to the ground and feistiest on their bloated livers in thy paté-de-foie-gras.”
― Herman Melville

“Normally I would have been the first to go in search of cannibal monks, particularly as I had heard of a similar tradition at a nunnery in the Philippines. It's the sort of quest I can't resist.”
― Tahir Shah, House of the Tiger King : The Quest for a Lost City

“A collective insanity seemed to have seized the nation and turned them into something worse than beasts. The princess de Lamballe, Marie Antoinette's intimate friend, was literally torn to pieces; her head, breasts, and pudenda were paraded on pikes before the windows of the Temple, where the royal family was imprisoned, while a man boasted drunkenly at a cafe that he had eaten the princess' heart, which he probably had.”
― J. Christopher Herold, The Age of Napoleon

“Nay, so great was our famine that a Salvage we slew and buried, the poorer sort took him up again and eat him; and so did divers one another, boyled and stewed with roots and herbs. And one amongst the rest did kill his wife, powdered her, and had eaten part of her, before it was knowne, for which hee was executed, as hee well deserved. Now whether shee was better roasted, boyled, or carbonado'd I know not, but of such a dish as powdered wife I never heard of.”
― John Smith, Pocahontas: My Own Story: Includes eBook

“Thistle flashes a wicked smile. "Oh, you haven't heard that one? The government struck a bargain with a cannibal, and they use him to dispose of bodies after executions."
"Who told you that story" I ask, trying to sound casual.
"The supermax prisoners use it to scare each other up in Huntsville. Better watch your step or a man from the government will come and eat you." She shrugs. "It doesn't make much sense, but conspiracy theories never do."
"Right. It's probably bullshit."
Thistle laughs. "Probably?"
"Definitely bullshit," I clarify. Then I take another bite out of Nigel Boyd's thigh.”
― Jack Heath, Hangman

“T'ao Tsung-yi, a writer during the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368), wrote that "children's meat was the best food of all in taste" followed by women and then men.”
― Bill Schutt, Cannibalism: A Perfectly Natural History

“But he was so hungry. There was something chewing at him from the inside, trying to get out. His head wasn't right. But he was so hungry-”
― Arden Powell, Flesh and Bone

“Adam and Eve had nothing on Killock and Cai. Apples were for amateurs. Sons eating fathers: that was a truly forbidden feast.”
― Sunyi Dean, The Book Eaters

“If there is nothing more romantic than being inside of your lover, if there is nothing more overwhelmingly beautiful than being as close to another person as is physically possible, then cannibalism could be considered the highest form of human connection.”
― Sarah Laudenbach

“With Hannibal, cannibalism is a representation of unyielding, queer love in the face of adversity, and harsh reality that queers know all too well: it is better to kill than to be killed, and better to consume than be consumed.”
― Sarah Laudenbach, We Bite Back: A Queer Charity Anthology

“A Brief History of Earth Cannibals (Sonnet)

There's no such thing as slave traders,
get your language straight, you idiots -
they were human traffickers, not traders,
you trade in commodity, not people.

Colonizers were not slave traders,
they were terrorists and traffickers;
settlers are not civilizers,
they are plague upon the civilized world.

The world outside europe was already civilized
beyond the wildest dreams of the europeans,
then those brutes set sail, and the human race
experienced an extinction level catastrophe.

To trade in human lives like livestock
is the savagest form of cannibalism -
white history sells the West as the free world,
but dig into earth history, and you'll realize,
West is the biggest threat to life and freedom.

Here is some rectified history,
dig up the rest for yourself -
Churchill was a big fat cannibal,
Leopold was an ugly deadly virus,
Columbus was a most wanted terrorist.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“To trade in human lives like livestock is the savagest form of cannibalism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“There's no such thing as slave traders, get your language straight, you idiots - they were human traffickers, not traders, you trade in commodity, not people. To trade in human lives like livestock is the savagest form of cannibalism.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Sonnets From The Mountaintop

“I read the Cannibal Manifesto. The part where it says they like to eat people is on page 289.”
― John Alejandro King aka The Covert Comic

“I wanted to eat her. Do you think her blood tastes the same as a humans? Perhaps it would rot our teeth with its delicious sweetness. Ever wonder if blood can cause cavities? I bet hers would.”
― William D. Arand, Monster's Mercy

“That's why the immolated people can't be told their body will be disembowelled, torn apart, chewed up and devoured by an outcast, an undesirable.”
― Agustina Bazterrica, Tender Is the Flesh

“I read the Cannibal Manifesto. The part where it says they like eating people is on page 289.”
― John Alejandro King aka The Covert Comic

“Her mother’s love usually never came without blood. But that’s how all love comes. That’s how you know it’s real.”
― Kayden Agnus, Bury Your Devoured

“Be Kind/Rewind
by Stewart Stafford

If you really are what you eat;
In that cauldron lies bare-faced deceit,
Communion lies of a predator pack,
If it passes your lips — no way back.

Surnamed ingredients in recipe code,
No faith lost if you’ve none to erode,
Beware “Be Nice” mantra’s public grace;
Penetrate the mask of private disgrace.

Pontificate as this superior guru,
Corrupted meat — you have Kuru.
Infernal lows of the flesh farmer,
A sightless husk in shuffling karma.

© 2026 Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford