The tragedy is not to die, but to be wasted.
I collect church collapses, recreationally. Did you see the recent one in Sicily? Marvelous! The facade fell on sixty-five grandmothers at a special mass. Was that evil? If so, who did it? If he’s up there, he just loves it, Officer Starling. Typhoid and swans – it all comes from the same place.
How seldom we recognize the sound when the bolt of our fate slides home.
We can only learn so much and live.
He sees very clearly – he damn sure sees through me. It’s hard to accept that someone can understand you without wishing you well. At Starling’s age it hadn’t happened to her much.
One can only see what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind.
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?
Problem-solving is hunting; it is savage pleasure and we are born to it.
Over this odd world, this half the world that’s dark now, I have to hunt a thing that lives on tears.
You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home.
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.
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.
He was numb except for dreading the loss of numbness.
Back at his chair he cannot remember what he was reading. He feels the books beside him to find the one that is warm.
The very air had screams smeared on it. He flinched from the noise in this silent room.
The worm that destroys you is the temptation to agree with your critics, to get their approval.
Typhoid and swans – it all comes from the same place.
There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named – the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.
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.
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.