I confess I do enjoy a good bit of bloodthirsty murder and mayhem in my literature and Silence of the Lambs’ author Thomas Harris has never failed to supply me with a hefty dollop of nauseating gore to go with my fava (What ARE fava beans?) beans and a nice Chianti.
Born on April 11th 1940 Harris is notoriously protective of his private life and very little is known about him other than the fact he lives with his long term partner Pace Barnes and is widely considered one of the good guys of the world. He is a staple of my and many other horror aficionados’ bookshelves and here we have gathered together some of our favourite Quotes to Silence the Lambs from Thomas Harris.
“I’m not sure you get wiser as you get older, Starling, but you do learn to dodge a certain amount of hell.”
“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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“Nothing makes us more vulnerable than loneliness except greed.”
“Back at his chair he cannot remember what he was reading. He feels the books beside him to find the one that is warm.”
“It’s hard and ugly to know someone can understand you without even liking you”
“Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.”
“When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin’, but not to help.”
“Are you looking for sympathy? You’ll find it in the dictionary between shit and syphilis”
Sorry, I couldn’t resist the video clip. After seeing the film, everything I read involving Hannibal is spoken in my mind in Anthony Hopkins’ velvety drawl.
Stephen King said of Thomas Harris “if writing is sometimes tedious for other authors, to Harris it is like “writhing on the floor in agonies of frustration”, because, for Harris, “the very act of writing is a kind of torment”.”
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