Life's too slippery for books, Clarice; anger appears as lust, lupus presents as hives.

The worm that destroys you is the temptation to agree with your critics, to get their approval.

Shiloh isn’t haunted – men are haunted. Shiloh doesn’t care.

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.

The advantage of beating a mute is he can't tell on you.

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...

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.