Quote

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

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Thomas Harris
Age: 84
Born: 1940
Born: April 11
Author
Novelist
Screenwriter
Writer
Jackson
Tennessee
William Thomas Harris III
Every
Killing
Begin
Doe
Firsts
Covets
Need
Coveting
First
Covet
Needs
Principal
Thing
Serve

More quotes by Thomas Harris

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And be grateful. Our scars have the power to remind us that the past was real.
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Life's too slippery for books, Clarice anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives.
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The tragedy is not to die, but to be wasted.
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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.
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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.
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You will not persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity.
Thomas Harris
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There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named -- the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.
Thomas Harris
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In her way, she was a hard one. Faith in any sort of natural justice was nothing but a night light she knew of that. Whatever she did, she would end the same way with everyone does: flat on her back with a tube in her nose, wondering, Is this all?
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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?
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It occured to Starling how much Roden would benefit from an elbow smash in the hinge of his jaw.
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He was numb except for dreading the loss of numbness.
Thomas Harris
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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.
Thomas Harris
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I found, and find, the scrutiny of Dr. Lecter uncomfortable, intrusive, like the humming of your thoughts when they x-ray your head.
Thomas Harris
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I would not have had that happen to you. Discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me.
Thomas Harris
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God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again.
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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.
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Funerals often make us want sex-it's one in the eye for death.
Thomas Harris
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You would think such a day would tremble to begin . . .
Thomas Harris
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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.
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When you feel strain, keep your mouth shut if you can.
Thomas Harris