Top 200 Thomas Harris Quotes (2026 Update)
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201. “I won’t be surprised if the answer is yes and no. The lambs will stop for now. But, Clarice, you judge yourself with all the mercy of the dungeon scales at Threave; you’ll have to earn it again and again, the blessed silence. Because it’s the plight that drives you, seeing the plight, and the plight will not end, ever.”

— Thomas Harris

202. “Clarice, I’m going to leave you here with these remains. Remains, Clarice. Scream your plight into his eyeholes and no reply will come.” He put his hands on the sides of her head. “What you need of your father is here, in your head, and subject to your judgment, not his.”

— Thomas Harris

203. “A paperback book was wrapped around Barney’s massive index finger as he held his place.”

— Thomas Harris

204. “You’re dead, Margot.” It sounded more like “Nargot.” “Oh, Mason, we all are. Didn’t you know? But these aren’t,” she said, securing her blouse over her warm container. “They’re wiggling. I’ll show you how. I’ll show you how they wiggle – show-and-tell.” Margot picked up the spiky fish-handling gloves beside the aquarium. “I could adopt Judy,” Mason said. “She could be my heir, and we could do a trust.” “We certainly could,” Margot said, lifting a carp out of the holding tank. She brought a.”

— Thomas Harris

205. “Speech is never a reliable indicator of how a person writes; you never know. Dolarhyde’s speech was bent and pruned by disabilities real and imagined, and the difference between his speech and his writing was startling. Still, he found he could not say the most important things he felt.”

— Thomas Harris

206. “He was numb and empty and he drank two fingers of whiskey from his bathroom glass before he lay down. The darkness pressed too closely on him. He turned on the bathroom light and went back to bed. He pretended Molly was in the bathroom brushing her hair.”

— Thomas Harris

207. “Hannibal stared steadily by candlelight at the faces sketched from his dreams and tried to make their mouths move. Perhaps they would sing at first, and then say their names. Hannibal sang himself, to start them singing.”

— Thomas Harris

208. “The room smelled of wood smoke and rosemary.”

— Thomas Harris

209. “He had had enough of the wideeyed dead.”

— Thomas Harris

210. “Mrs. Leeds was lovely, wasn’t she? You turned on the light after you cut his throat so Mrs. Leeds could watch him flop, didn’t you? It was maddening to have to wear gloves when you touched her, wasn’t it?”

— Thomas Harris

211. “Problem-solving is hunting;.”

— Thomas Harris

212. “We don’t invent our natures, Will; they’re issued to us along with our lungs and pancreas and everything else. Why fight it?”

— Thomas Harris

213. “Faith in technique is the religion of the dangerous trades. To go up against an armed felon in a gunfight or to fight him in the dirt you have to believe perfect technique, hard training, will guarantee that you are invincible. This is not true, partricularly in firefights. You can stack the odds in your favor, but if you get into enough gunfights, you will be killed in one.”

— Thomas Harris

214. “Pitiful little bodies underneath the sheets, the unclaimed, the starvelings found huddled in alleys, still hugging themselves in death until rigor passed and then, in the formalin bath of the cadaver tank with their fellows, they let themselves go at last.”

— Thomas Harris

215. “I think of you often.”

— Thomas Harris

216. “BARNEY HAD never been in the barn before.”

— Thomas Harris

217. “Graham felt that it was she who drew the monster, as surely as a singing cricket attracts death from the redeyed fly.”

— Thomas Harris

218. “Graham had a lot of trouble with taste. Often his thoughts were not tasty.”

— Thomas Harris

219. “On the first day his pennant flew from the completed towers, he assembled the prisoners in the kitchen garden, and, mounting his gallows to address them, he released the men to go home, just as he had promised. Many elected to stay in his service, owing to the quality of the provender.”

— Thomas Harris

220. “You really must look at me when I’m talking to you,” Kabakov said. “Are you ready to cooperate? Blink for yes. Die for no.”

— Thomas Harris

221. “Men have no confidence in whispers.”

— Thomas Harris

222. “Springfield in 1938 was not a center for plastic surgery. In Springfield, you wore your face as it was.”

— Thomas Harris

223. “Crawford got to his feet. “Director Noonan, may I say – ” “You may leave, is what you may do,” Krendler said.”

— Thomas Harris

224. “When it was convenient, he would move on. There was no reason to hurry.”

— Thomas Harris

225. “Karla had not been a total loss – she had provided Hans-Peter with some amusement and he was able to sell both her kidneys.”

— Thomas Harris

226. “Hannibal could smell him.”

— Thomas Harris

227. “There’s nothing we can threaten him with that’s more terrible than what he faces every day.”

— Thomas Harris

228. “You’ve met Molly?” “Yeah. She’s great, I like her. She’d be glad to see me in hell with my back broken, of course.”

— Thomas Harris

229. “Ze zaten op de banken en in rolstoelen naar de radio te luisteren, hun doffe ogen gericht op de vissen of op niets of op iets dat ze lang geleden hadden gezien.”

— Thomas Harris