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.

Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn't it?

Hannibal at eighteen was rooting for Mephistopheles and contemptuous of Faust, but he only half-listened to the climax. He was watching and breathing Lady Murasaki...

There is a common emotion we all recognize and have not yet named -- the happy anticipation of being able to feel contempt.

It rubs the lotion on its skin. It does this whenever it is told.

Writing novels is the hardest thing I've ever done, including digging irrigation ditches.

Hannibal Lecter: We live in a primitive time - don't we, Will? - neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.