Thomas Harris Quotes

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

And be grateful. Our scars have the power to remind us that the past was real.

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

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

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.

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

Nothing made me happen. I happened.

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

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

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

In making friends, she was wary of people who foster dependency and feed on it. She had been involved with a few–the blind attract them, and they are the enemy.

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

I have no interest in understanding sheep, only eating them.

Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.

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

Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness, except greed.

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.

Typhoid and swans – it all comes from the same place.