Top 200 Thomas Harris Quotes (2025 Update)

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

— Thomas Harris

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

— Thomas Harris

3. “Hannibal Lecter: We live in a primitive time – don’t we, Will? – neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.”

— Thomas Harris

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

— Thomas Harris

5. “Primum non nocere. First do no harm.”

— Thomas Harris

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

— Thomas Harris

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

— Thomas Harris

8. “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

9. “I am the dragon, and you call me insane.”

— Thomas Harris

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

— Thomas Harris

11. “Nothing made me happen. I happened.”

— Thomas Harris

12. “Silence can mock.”

— Thomas Harris

13. “Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn’t it?”

— Thomas Harris

14. “He moves smoothly and slowly, carrying his concentration like a brimming cup.”

— Thomas Harris

15. “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

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

— Thomas Harris

17. “There is no murder. We make murder, and it matters only to us.”

— Thomas Harris

18. “Hannibal at eighteen was rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust, but he only half-listened to the climax. He was watching and breathing Lady Murasaki...”

— Thomas Harris

19. “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.”

— Thomas Harris

20. “It’s fear, Jack. The man deals with a huge amount of fear.? Because he got hurt?? No, not entirely. Fear comes with imagination, it’s a penalty, it’s the price of imagination.”

— Thomas Harris

21. “You cant reduce me to a set of influences.”

— Thomas Harris

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

— Thomas Harris

23. “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

24. “Shiloh isn’t haunted – men are haunted. Shiloh doesn’t care.”

— Thomas Harris

25. “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

26. “It’s hard to have anything isn’t it? Rare to get it, hard to keep it. This is a damn slippery planet.”

— Thomas Harris

27. “Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.”

— Thomas Harris

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

— Thomas Harris

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

— Thomas Harris

30. “Intense fear comes in waves; the body can’t stand it for long at a time.”

— Thomas Harris

31. “When you feel strain, keep your mouth shut if you can.”

— Thomas Harris

32. “One quality in a person doesn’t rule out any other quality. They can exist side by side, good and terrible. Socrates said it a lot better.”

— Thomas Harris

33. “You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home.”

— Thomas Harris

34. “The first step in the development of taste is to be willing to credit your own opinion.”

— Thomas Harris

35. “When I couldn’t speak I was not drawn into silence, silence captured me.”

— Thomas Harris

36. “Live right behind your eyes. Listen to yourself.”

— Thomas Harris

37. “Curious how things can work on you even when you recognize them.”

— Thomas Harris

38. “Experience decorates us.”

— Thomas Harris

39. “A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone. Go back to school, little Starling.”

— Thomas Harris

40. “Life’s too slippery for books, Clarice; anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives.”

— Thomas Harris

41. “Gratitude’s got a short half-life, Clarice.”

— Thomas Harris

42. “We can only learn so much and live.”

— Thomas Harris

43. “Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?”

— Thomas Harris

44. “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.”

— Thomas Harris

45. “You said that I, who see more than you, am insane. I, who pushed the world so much further than you, am insane. I have dared more than you, I have pressed my unique seal so much deeper in the earth, where it will last longer than your dust... you owe me awe.”

— Thomas Harris

46. “Which do you think, Commendatore? Bowels in or out?”

— Thomas Harris

47. “Sanity and apparent rationality are not the same, comrade.”

— Thomas Harris

48. “Hello Clarice...”

— Thomas Harris

49. “Too many was too many, but way too many was just right.”

— Thomas Harris

50. “God’s creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again.”

— Thomas Harris