Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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

Image
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.
Thomas Harris
Image
He was numb except for dreading the loss of numbness.
Thomas Harris
Image
You will not persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity.
Thomas Harris
Image
Funerals often make us want sex-it's one in the eye for death.
Thomas Harris
Image
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
Image
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.
Thomas Harris
Image
We can only learn so much and live.
Thomas Harris
Image
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?
Thomas Harris
Image
Human emotions are a gift from our animal ancestors. Cruelty is a gift humanity has given itself.
Thomas Harris
Image
… It is not healing to see your childhood home, but it helps you measure whether you are broken, and how and why, assuming you want to know.
Thomas Harris
Image
God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again.
Thomas Harris
Image
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
Image
Nothing made me happen. I happened.
Thomas Harris
Image
And be grateful. Our scars have the power to remind us that the past was real.
Thomas Harris
Image
The tragedy is not to die, but to be wasted.
Thomas Harris
Image
What he has in addition is pure empathy and projection,” Dr. Bloom said. “He can assume your point of view, or mine – and maybe some other points of view that scare and sicken him. It’s an uncomfortable gift, Jack. Perception’s a tool that’s pointed on both ends.
Thomas Harris
Image
Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.
Thomas Harris
Image
You would think such a day would tremble to begin . . .
Thomas Harris
Image
Problem-solving is hunting it is savage pleasure and we are born to it.
Thomas Harris
Image
When you feel strain, keep your mouth shut if you can.
Thomas Harris