One can only see what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind.

Spaces devoted to Hannibal Lecter’s earliest years differ from the other archives in being incomplete. Some are static scenes, fragmentary, like painted attic shards held together by blank plaster. Other rooms hold sound and motion, great snakes wrestling and heaving in the dark and lit in flashes. Pleas and screaming fill some places on the grounds where Hannibal himself cannot go. But the corridors do not echo screaming, and there is music if you like.

Human emotions are a gift from our animal ancestors. Cruelty is a gift humanity has given itself.

The most stable elements, Clarice, appear in the middle of the periodic table, roughly between iron and silver. Between iron and silver. I think that is appropriate for you.

I would not have had that happen to you. Discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me.

Typhoid and swans - it all comes from the same place.

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