I'll confess it is pleasant to look at you asleep. You're quite beautiful, Clarice.

In the vaults of our hearts and brains, danger waits. All the chambers are not lovely, light and high. There are holes in the floor of the mind, like those in a medieval dungeon floor - the stinking oubliettes, named for forgetting, bottle-shaped cells in solid rock with the trapdoor in the top. Nothing escapes from them quietly to ease us. A quake, some betrayal by our safeguards, and sparks of memory fire the noxious gases - things trapped for years fly free, ready to explode in pain and drive us to dangerous behavior.

It occurred to Dr. Lecter in the moment that with all his knowledge and intrusion, he could never entirely predict her, or own her at all. He could feed the caterpillar, he could whisper through the chrysalis; what hatched out followed its own nature and was beyond him. He wondered if she had the .45 on her leg beneath the gown. Clarice Starling smiled at him then, the cabochons caught the firelight and the monster was lost in self-congratulation at his own exquisite taste and cunning.

And be grateful. Our scars have the power to remind us that the past was real.

A census taker tried to quantify me once. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a big Amarone. Go back to school, little Starling.

I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti

Back at his chair he cannot remember what he was reading. He feels the books beside him to find the one that is warm.