The Silence of the Lambs

by

Thomas Harris

Hannibal Lecter is a renowned clinical psychiatrist turned serial killer who cannibalizes his victims. In The Silence of the Lambs, Lecter is imprisoned in the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, and FBI agents Jack Crawford and Clarice Starling hope that Lecter can provide insight that will help them apprehend the serial killer Buffalo Bill. Getting Lecter to cooperate proves difficult, though, because he is brilliant and nearly impossible to deceive. According to Crawford, Lecter’s only weakness is his ego, which Starling and Crawford do their best to exploit. What is terrifying about Lecter is his intimate understanding of human psychology. The first time he meets people, including Starling, he can tell a lot about them; very few details escape his notice. However, as Starling mentions in one of their conversations, it is unclear whether he will turn his insights back on himself. In general, Lecter despises the idea that it is possible for someone else to neatly explain another person’s psychology. Any explanations others have ventured about him, he rejects. He considers himself entirely unique, and perhaps he is. One interesting aspect of Lecter’s personality is that he has a sense of decorum despite being a serial killer. Lecter abhors rude people and behavior and displays gratitude towards those who treat him well. He is also genuinely interested in Starling and shares a bond with her that neither of them can adequately explain. Although Lecter is behind bars for most of the novel, he eventually escapes and becomes a free man.

Hannibal Lecter Quotes in The Silence of the Lambs

The The Silence of the Lambs quotes below are all either spoken by Hannibal Lecter or refer to Hannibal Lecter. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Sexism and Law Enforcement Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

“Do your job, just don’t ever forget what he is.”

“And what’s that? Do you know?”

“I know he’s a monster. Beyond that, nobody can say for sure.”

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Jack Crawford (speaker), Hannibal Lecter
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can’t reduce me to a set of influences. You’ve given up good and evil for behaviorism, Officer Starling. You’ve got everybody in moral dignity pants—nothing is ever anybody’s fault. Look at me, Officer Starling. Can you stand to say I’m evil? Am I evil, Officer Starling?

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Clarice Starling
Page Number: 21
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Clarice Starling
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:

You’d like to quantify me, Officer Starling. You’re so ambitious, aren’t you? Do you know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. You’re a well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Your eyes are like cheap birthstones—all surface shine when you stalk some little answer. And you’re bright behind them, aren’t you? Desperate not to be like your mother. Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you’re not more than one generation out of the mines, Officer Starling. Is it the West Virginia Starlings or the Okie Starlings, Officer? It was a toss-up between college and the opportunities in the Women’s Army Corps, wasn’t it? Let me tell you something specific about yourself, Student Starling. Back in your room, you have a string of gold add-a-beads and you feel an ugly little thump when you look at how tacky they are now, isn’t that so? All those tedious thank-yous, permitting all that sincere fumbling, getting all sticky once for every bead. Tedious. Tedious. Bo-o-o-o-r-i-ing. Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn’t it?

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Clarice Starling
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

That’s not a guess. He’s very likely right, and he could have told you why, but he wanted to tease you with it. It’s the only weakness I ever saw in him—he has to look smart, smarter than anybody. He’s been doing it for years.

Related Characters: Jack Crawford (speaker), Clarice Starling, Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

“What do your two disciplines tell you about Buffalo Bill?”

“By the book, he’s a sadist.”

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

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill
Page Number: 146
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

“Clarice, he was working at night, in a pickup truck, armed only with a shotgun.... Tell me, did he wear a time clock on his belt by any chance? One of those things where they have keys screwed to posts all over town and you have to drive to them and stick them in your clock? So the town fathers know you weren’t asleep. Tell me if he wore one, Clarice.”

“Yes.”

“He was a night watchman, wasn’t he, Clarice, he wasn’t a marshal at all. I’ll know if you lie.”

“The job description said night marshal.”

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Hannibal Lecter (speaker)
Page Number: 165
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

“I hadn’t heard your voice in years—I suppose the last time was when you gave me all the misleading answers in my interviews and then ridiculed me in your Journal articles. It’s hard to believe an inmate’s opinions could count for anything in the professional community, isn’t it?”

Related Characters: Dr. Chilton (speaker), Hannibal Lecter, Catherine Baker Martin
Page Number: 175-176
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

To even mention Buffalo Bill in the same breath with the problems we treat here is ignorant and unfair and dangerous, Mr. Crawford. It makes my hair stand on end.

Related Characters: Dr. Danielson (speaker), Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Jack Crawford, Catherine Baker Martin
Page Number: 181
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

When her pupils darkened, Dr. Lecter took a single sip of her pain and found it exquisite. That was enough for today.

Related Characters: Clarice Starling, Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Noble Pilcher, Senator Ruth Martin
Related Symbols: Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

He switches back to the cage just in time. The big insect’s wings are held above her back, hiding and distorting her markings. Now she brings down her wings to cloak her body and the famous design is clear. A human skull, wonderfully executed in the furlike scales, stares from the back of the moth. Under the shaded dome of the skull are the black eye holes and prominent cheekbones. Beneath them darkness lies like a gag across the face above the jaw. The skull rests on a marking flared like the top of a pelvis.

A skull stacked upon a pelvis, all drawn on the back of a moth by an accident of nature.

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Related Symbols: Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 35 Quotes

“He covets. In fact, he covets being the very thing you are. It’s his nature to covet. How do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort at an answer.”

“No. We just—”

“No. Precisely so. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don’t you feel eyes moving over you every day, Clarice, in chance encounters? I hardly see how you could not. And don’t your eyes move over things?”

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:

Do you think if you caught Buffalo Bill yourself and if you made Catherine all right, you could make the lambs stop screaming, do you think they’d be all right too and you wouldn’t wake up again in the dark and hear the lambs screaming?

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Clarice Starling, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Related Symbols: Lambs
Page Number: 230
Explanation and Analysis:

“Thank you, Clarice.”

“Thank you, Dr. Lecter.”

And that is how he remained in Starling’s mind. Caught in the instant when he did not mock. Standing in his white cell, arched like a dancer, his hands clasped in front of him and his head slightly to the side.

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Hannibal Lecter (speaker)
Page Number: 231
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 61 Quotes

Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?

You owe me a piece of information, you know, and that’s what I’d like.

An ad in the national edition of the Times and in the International Herald-Tribune on the first of any month will be fine. Better put it in the China Mail as well.

I won’t be surprised if the answer is yes and no. The lambs will stop for now. But, Clarice, you judge yourself with all the mercy of the dungeon scales at Threave; you’ll have to earn it again and again, the blessed silence. Because it’s the plight that drives you, seeing the plight, and the plight will not end, ever.

I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it. Be sure you extend me the same courtesy.

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Clarice Starling, Noble Pilcher
Related Symbols: Lambs, Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 366
Explanation and Analysis:
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Hannibal Lecter Quotes in The Silence of the Lambs

The The Silence of the Lambs quotes below are all either spoken by Hannibal Lecter or refer to Hannibal Lecter. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Sexism and Law Enforcement Theme Icon
).
Chapter 1 Quotes

“Do your job, just don’t ever forget what he is.”

“And what’s that? Do you know?”

“I know he’s a monster. Beyond that, nobody can say for sure.”

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Jack Crawford (speaker), Hannibal Lecter
Page Number: 6
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 3 Quotes

Nothing happened to me, Officer Starling. I happened. You can’t reduce me to a set of influences. You’ve given up good and evil for behaviorism, Officer Starling. You’ve got everybody in moral dignity pants—nothing is ever anybody’s fault. Look at me, Officer Starling. Can you stand to say I’m evil? Am I evil, Officer Starling?

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Clarice Starling
Page Number: 21
Explanation and Analysis:

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.

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Clarice Starling
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:

You’d like to quantify me, Officer Starling. You’re so ambitious, aren’t you? Do you know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. You’re a well-scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Your eyes are like cheap birthstones—all surface shine when you stalk some little answer. And you’re bright behind them, aren’t you? Desperate not to be like your mother. Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you’re not more than one generation out of the mines, Officer Starling. Is it the West Virginia Starlings or the Okie Starlings, Officer? It was a toss-up between college and the opportunities in the Women’s Army Corps, wasn’t it? Let me tell you something specific about yourself, Student Starling. Back in your room, you have a string of gold add-a-beads and you feel an ugly little thump when you look at how tacky they are now, isn’t that so? All those tedious thank-yous, permitting all that sincere fumbling, getting all sticky once for every bead. Tedious. Tedious. Bo-o-o-o-r-i-ing. Being smart spoils a lot of things, doesn’t it?

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Clarice Starling
Page Number: 22
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

That’s not a guess. He’s very likely right, and he could have told you why, but he wanted to tease you with it. It’s the only weakness I ever saw in him—he has to look smart, smarter than anybody. He’s been doing it for years.

Related Characters: Jack Crawford (speaker), Clarice Starling, Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill
Page Number: 94
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 22 Quotes

“What do your two disciplines tell you about Buffalo Bill?”

“By the book, he’s a sadist.”

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

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill
Page Number: 146
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 25 Quotes

“Clarice, he was working at night, in a pickup truck, armed only with a shotgun.... Tell me, did he wear a time clock on his belt by any chance? One of those things where they have keys screwed to posts all over town and you have to drive to them and stick them in your clock? So the town fathers know you weren’t asleep. Tell me if he wore one, Clarice.”

“Yes.”

“He was a night watchman, wasn’t he, Clarice, he wasn’t a marshal at all. I’ll know if you lie.”

“The job description said night marshal.”

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Hannibal Lecter (speaker)
Page Number: 165
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 27 Quotes

“I hadn’t heard your voice in years—I suppose the last time was when you gave me all the misleading answers in my interviews and then ridiculed me in your Journal articles. It’s hard to believe an inmate’s opinions could count for anything in the professional community, isn’t it?”

Related Characters: Dr. Chilton (speaker), Hannibal Lecter, Catherine Baker Martin
Page Number: 175-176
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 28 Quotes

To even mention Buffalo Bill in the same breath with the problems we treat here is ignorant and unfair and dangerous, Mr. Crawford. It makes my hair stand on end.

Related Characters: Dr. Danielson (speaker), Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Jack Crawford, Catherine Baker Martin
Page Number: 181
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 32 Quotes

When her pupils darkened, Dr. Lecter took a single sip of her pain and found it exquisite. That was enough for today.

Related Characters: Clarice Starling, Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Noble Pilcher, Senator Ruth Martin
Related Symbols: Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 201
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 33 Quotes

He switches back to the cage just in time. The big insect’s wings are held above her back, hiding and distorting her markings. Now she brings down her wings to cloak her body and the famous design is clear. A human skull, wonderfully executed in the furlike scales, stares from the back of the moth. Under the shaded dome of the skull are the black eye holes and prominent cheekbones. Beneath them darkness lies like a gag across the face above the jaw. The skull rests on a marking flared like the top of a pelvis.

A skull stacked upon a pelvis, all drawn on the back of a moth by an accident of nature.

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Related Symbols: Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 205
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 35 Quotes

“He covets. In fact, he covets being the very thing you are. It’s his nature to covet. How do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort at an answer.”

“No. We just—”

“No. Precisely so. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don’t you feel eyes moving over you every day, Clarice, in chance encounters? I hardly see how you could not. And don’t your eyes move over things?”

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Page Number: 227
Explanation and Analysis:

Do you think if you caught Buffalo Bill yourself and if you made Catherine all right, you could make the lambs stop screaming, do you think they’d be all right too and you wouldn’t wake up again in the dark and hear the lambs screaming?

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Clarice Starling, Jame Gumb/Buffalo Bill, Catherine Baker Martin
Related Symbols: Lambs
Page Number: 230
Explanation and Analysis:

“Thank you, Clarice.”

“Thank you, Dr. Lecter.”

And that is how he remained in Starling’s mind. Caught in the instant when he did not mock. Standing in his white cell, arched like a dancer, his hands clasped in front of him and his head slightly to the side.

Related Characters: Clarice Starling (speaker), Hannibal Lecter (speaker)
Page Number: 231
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 61 Quotes

Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?

You owe me a piece of information, you know, and that’s what I’d like.

An ad in the national edition of the Times and in the International Herald-Tribune on the first of any month will be fine. Better put it in the China Mail as well.

I won’t be surprised if the answer is yes and no. The lambs will stop for now. But, Clarice, you judge yourself with all the mercy of the dungeon scales at Threave; you’ll have to earn it again and again, the blessed silence. Because it’s the plight that drives you, seeing the plight, and the plight will not end, ever.

I have no plans to call on you, Clarice, the world being more interesting with you in it. Be sure you extend me the same courtesy.

Related Characters: Hannibal Lecter (speaker), Clarice Starling, Noble Pilcher
Related Symbols: Lambs, Death’s Head Moths
Page Number: 366
Explanation and Analysis: