When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help.

Nothing made me happen. I happened.

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

Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn't it?

The tragedy is not to die, but to be wasted.

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.

It's hard to have anything isn't it? Rare to get it, hard to keep it. This is a damn slippery planet.

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.

Are you looking for sympathy? You'll find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis

Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.

We can only learn so much and live.

Silence can mock.

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.

I'm not sure you get wiser as you get older, Starling, but you do learn to dodge a certain amount of hell.

I'm doing one of three things: I'm writing. I'm staring out the window. Or I'm writhing on the floor.

The worm that destroys you is the temptation to agree with your critics, to get their approval.

Fear comes with imagination, it’s a penalty, it’s the price of imagination.

Over this odd world, this half the world that's dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears.

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.

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.

I'm giving serious thought into eating yor wife” - Hannibal Lecter

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.

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

I love myself that much and I will never apologize to you.

You would think such a day would tremble to begin . . .

You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.

The advantage of beating a mute is he can't tell on you.

If I saw you everyday forever, I would remember this time.

He lives down in a ribcage in the dry leaves of a heart.

There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named -- the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.

I am the dragon, and you call me insane.

It rubs the lotion on its skin. It does this whenever it is told.

You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home.

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

… It is not healing to see your childhood home, but it helps you measure whether you are broken, and how and why, assuming you want to know.

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

But the face on the pillow, rosy in the firelight, is certainly that of Clarice Starling, and she sleeps deeply, sweetly, in the silence of the lambs.

Back at his chair he cannot remember what he was reading. He feels the books beside him to find the one that is warm.

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.

On a related subject, Signore Pazzi, I must confess to you: I'm giving serious thought to eating your wife.

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

How seldom we recognize the sound when the bolt of our fate slides home.

I'll confess it is pleasant to look at you asleep. You're quite beautiful, Clarice.

Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odor is trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid. Remember it, it's the smell of schizophrenia.

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

Shiloh isn’t haunted – men are haunted. Shiloh doesn’t care.

One can only see what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind.

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

Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can't reduce me to a set of influences.

He was numb except for dreading the loss of numbness.