“The tragedy is not to die, but to be wasted.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“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.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“We can only learn so much and live.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“The worm that destroys you is the temptation to agree with your critics, to get their approval.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“If I saw you everyday forever, I would remember this time.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“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...”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“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.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“Dr. Fell, do you believe a man could become so obsessed with a woman, from a single encounter?
Could he daily feel a stab of hunger for her and find nourishment in the very sight of her? I think so. But would she see through the bars of his plight and ache for him?”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“You would think such a day would tremble to begin . . .”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“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.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named—the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“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.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“It occurred to Dr. Lecter in the moment that with all his knowledge and intrusion, he could never entirely predict her, or own her at all. He could feed the caterpillar, he could whisper through the chrysalis; what hatched out followed its own nature and was beyond him. He wondered if she had the .45 on her leg beneath the gown.
Clarice Starling smiled at him then, the cabochons caught the firelight and the monster was lost in self-congratulation at his own exquisite taste and cunning.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“On a related subject, Signore Pazzi, I must confess to you: I'm giving serious thought to eating your wife.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“I'll confess it is pleasant to look at you asleep. You're quite beautiful, Clarice.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“Occasionally, on purpose, Dr. Lecter drops a teacup to shatter on the floor. He is satisfied when it does not gather itself together. For many months now, he has not seen Mischa in his dreams.
Someday perhaps a cup will come together. Or somewhere Starling may hear a crossbow string and come to some unwilled awakening, if indeed she even sleeps.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“We routinely leave our small children in day care among strangers. At the same time, in our guilt we evince paranoia about strangers and foster fear in children.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“The first step in the development of taste is to be willing to to credit your own opinion.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“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.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“He looked up and saw her and his breath stopped in his throat. His hands stopped too, still spread above the keyboard. Harpsichord notes do not carry, and in the sudden quiet of the drawing room they both heard him take his next breath.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“We assign a moment to decision, to dignify the process as a timely result of rational and conscious thought. But decisions are made of kneaded feelings; they are more often a lump than a sum.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“She wanted to go inside. She wanted to go in, wanting it as we want to jump from balconies, as the glint of the rails tempts us when we hear the approaching train.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“He could see that he had too many flowers in the room, and must add more to make it come back right again. Too many flowers was too many, but way too many was just right.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“I'm going to cut you loose. With all due respect, Doctor, if you fuck with me I'll shoot you dead, here and now. Do you understand that?"- Clarice
"Perfectly."- Hannibal Lecter
"Do right and you'll live through this." -Clarice”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“She was charming way a cub is charming, a small cub that will grow up to be like one of the big cats. One you can't play with later”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“[T]here is no consensus in the psychiatric community that Dr. Lecter should be termed a
man. He has long been regarded by his professional peers in psychiatry, many of whom
fear his acid pen in the professional journals, as something entirely Other. For
convenience, they term him “monster”.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“It's hard and ugly to know someone can understand you without even liking you.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“He could feed the caterpillar, he could whisper through the chrysalis; what hatched out followed its own nature and was beyond him.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“Dr. Lecter, erect as a dancer and carrying Starling in his arms, came out from behind the gate, walked barefoot out of the barn, through the pigs. Dr. Lecter walked through the sea of tossing backs and bloodspray in the barn.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
“The exposition of Atrocious Torture Instruments could not fail to appeal to a connoisseur of the worst in mankind. But the essence of the worst, the true asafoetida of the human spirit, is not found in the Iron Maiden or the whetted edge; Elemental Ugliness is found in the faces of the crowd.”
― Thomas Harris, quote from Hannibal
Thomas Harris
Born place: in Jackson, Tennessee, The United States
Born date April 11, 1940
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“You do not know how much they mean to me, my friends,
And how, how rare and strange it is, to find
In a life composed so much, so much of odds and ends,
(For indeed I do not love it ... you knew? you are not blind! How keen you are!)
To find a friend who has these qualities,
Who has, and gives
Those qualities upon which friendship lives.
How much it means that I say this to you-
Without these friendships-life, what cauchemar!”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Collected Poems, 1909-1962
“Ready to s-snuggle?” he asked Kaidan, a slight clatter in his voice. Only Blake could joke on a night like this and get away with it.
Kaidan shook his head and undressed down to his boxers, too, the tension finally shedding away from his frame. “I swear, mate. If I feel something poke me in the back. . .”
Blake's laugh was dry. “I'm pretty sure my junk froze off, man, so don't worry.”
― Wendy Higgins, quote from Sweet Peril
“she and Mattia were united by an invisible, elastic thread, buried under a pile of meaningless things, a thread that could exist only between two people like themselves: two people who had acknowledged their own solitude within the other.”
― Paolo Giordano, quote from The Solitude of Prime Numbers
“I’ve come to the conclusion that there are no set rules in life. You do what you have to do to survive. If that means running away from the love of your life to preserve your sanity, you do it. If it means breaking someone’s heart so yours doesn’t break; do it. Life is complicated — too much so for there to be absolutes. We are all so broken. Pick up a person, shake them around and you’ll hear the rattling of their broken pieces. Pieces our fathers broke, or our mothers, or our friends, strangers, or our loves. Olivia has stopped rattling quite as much as she used to. Love is a God-given tool, she tells me. It screws things back in place that were loose, and it cleans out all the broken pieces that you don’t need anymore. I believe her. Our love has been fixing each other. I hope to only hear a tiny jingle when I shake her in a few years”
― Tarryn Fisher, quote from Thief
“My skin came alive under his fingers, every touch an electric crackle through my veins.”
― Andrea Cremer, quote from Wolfsbane
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