Thomas Harris Quotes

“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.”

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

“We can only learn so much and live.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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...”

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

“I think it’s easy to mistake understanding for empathy - we want empathy so badly. Maybe learning to make that distinction is part of growing up. It’s hard and ugly to know somebody can understand you without even liking you.”

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

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

“It’s easy to mistake understanding for empathy - we want empathy so badly. Maybe learning to make that distinction is part of growing up. It’s hard and ugly to know somebody can understand you without even liking you.”

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