The Silence of the Lambs Quotes

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

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

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.

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.

Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Evil's just destructive? Then storms are evil, if it's that simple. And we have fire, and there there's hail. Underwriters lump it all under 'Acts of God.

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.

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

Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be ... But i expect you can see it too. Some of our stars are the same.

Good-bye Clarice. Will you let me know if ever the lambs stop screaming?" "Yes." Pembry was taking her arm. It was go or fight him. "Yes," she said. "I'll tell you." "Do you promise?""Yes.

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

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

I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it.

We rarely get to prepare ourselves in meadows or on graveled walks; we do it on short notice in places without windows, hospital corridors, rooms like this lounge with its cracked plastic sofa and Cinzano ashtrays, where the cafe curtains cover blank concrete. In rooms like this, with so little time, we prepare our gestures, get them by heart so we can do them when we're frightened in the face of Doom.

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

We don't begin to covet with imagined things. Coveting is a very literal sin–we begin to covet with tangibles, we begin with what we see every day.

... the washing machine's rhythm was like a giant heartbeat, and the rush of its waters was what the unborn hear- our last memory of peace.

He knew that a middle-aged man can be so desperate for wisdom he may try to make some up, and how deadly that can be to a youngster who believes him.

Almost every place has a moment of the day, an angle and intensity of light, in which it looks its best. When you're stuck someplace, you learn that time and you look forward to it.

Waste and stupidity get you the worst, that’s what he said. Use this time and it’ll temper you. Now’s the hardest test—not letting rage and frustration keep you from thinking. It’s the core of whether you can command or not.

It was as though committing murders had purged him of lesser rudeness. Or perhaps, Starling thought, it excited him to see her marked in this particular way. She couldn't tell. The sparks in his eyes flew into his darkness like fireflies down a cave.

And your dinner for the orchestra officials." "Haven't you ever had people coming over and no time to shop? You have to make do with what's in the fridge, Clarice. May I call you Clarice?.

It occured to Starling how much Roden would benefit from an elbow smash in the hinge of his jaw.

He held it at arm's length, through the bars, his forefinger along the spine. She reached across the barrier and took it. For an instant the tip of her forefinger touched Dr. Lecter's. The touch crackled in his eyes. "Thank you, Clarice." "Thank you, Dr. Lecter." And that is how he remained in Starling's mind. Caught in the instant when he did not mock. Standing in his white cell, arched like a dancer, his hands clasped in front of him and his head slightly to the side.

I know what you're afraid of. It's not pain, or solitude. It's indignity you can't stand, Hannibal, you're like a cat that way.

Discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me.