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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.

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
Novel
Making
Understand
Anything
Find
Must
Writing

More quotes by Thomas Harris

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Human emotions are a gift from our animal ancestors. Cruelty is a gift humanity has given itself.
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Nothing made me happen. I happened.
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When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help.
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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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God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again.
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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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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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You will not persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity.
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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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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.
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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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We can only learn so much and live.
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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.
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Before Me you are a slug in the sun. You are privy to a great Becoming and you recognize nothing. You are an ant in the after-birth.It is in your nature to do one thing correctly: before Me you rightly tremble. Fear is not what you owe Me, Lounds, you and the other pismires. You owe Me awe.
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Problem-solving is hunting it is savage pleasure and we are born to it.
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Funerals often make us want sex-it's one in the eye for death.
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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.
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Intense fear comes in waves the body can't stand it for long at a time.
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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.
Thomas Harris