Hannibal Quotes

“When the Fox hears the Rabbit scream he comes a-runnin', but not to help.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“He lives down in a ribcage in the dry leaves of a heart.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“You know how cats do. They hide to die. Dogs come home.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be ... But i expect you can see it too. Some of our stars are the same.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“Can you smell his sweat? That peculiar goatish odor is trans-3-methyl-2 hexenoic acid. Remember it, it's the smell of schizophrenia.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“The mirrors in your mind can reflect the best of yourself, not the worst of someone else.”
― Hannibal

“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...”
― Thomas Harris, Hannibal Rising

“En este extraño mundo, esta mitad del mundo que ahora está a oscuras, tengo que perseguir a un ser que se alimenta de lágrimas”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“Now that ceaseless exposure has calloused us to the lewd and the vulgar, it is instructive to see what still seems wicked to us. What still slaps the clammy flab of our submissive consciousness hard enough to get our attention?”
― Thomas Harris, Hannibal

“that there had to be a place in the world for Mischa, a prime place vacated for her, and I came to think, Clarice, that the best place in the world was yours.”
― Thomas Harris, Hannibal

“Sometimes at night I would leave the lights on in my little house and walk across the flat fields. When I looked back from a distance, the house looked like a boat at sea. And all around me the vast Delta night.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Pictures ... flashed on her in sudden color, too much color, shocking color, the color that leaps out of black when lightning strikes at night.”
― Thomas Harris, The Silence of the Lambs

“What is desire? Desire is a restaurant. Desire is watching you eat. Desire is pouring wine for you. Desire is looking at the menu and wondering what it would be like to kiss you. Desire is the surprise of your skin. Look - in between us now are the props of ordinary life - glasses, knives, cloths, Time has been here before. History has had you - and me too. My hand has brushed against yours for centuries. The props change, but not this. Not this single naked wanting you.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Two Stories

“No existe misericordia en la Máquina verde; nosotros la creamos, fabricándola en las partes que han superado nuestro elemental cerebro de reptil. No existe el crimen, nosotros lo hemos creado y solo a nosotros nos incumbe.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Scipio asked Hannibal, “Whom he thought the greatest captain?” The latter answered,
“Alexander . . . because with a small force he defeated armies whose numbers were beyond reckoning, and because he had overrun the remotest regions, merely to visit which was a thing above human aspirations.”
Scipio then asked, “ To whom he gave the second place ? ” and Hannibal replied,
“To Pyrrhus, for he first taught the method of encamping, and besides, no one ever showed such exquisite judgment in choosing his ground and disposing his posts; while he also possessed the art of conciliating mankind to himself to such a degree that the natives of Italy wished him, though a foreign prince, to hold the sovereignty among them, rather than the Roman people. . . .”
On Scipio proceeding to ask, “Whom he esteemed the third? ”
Hannibal replied, “Myself, beyond doubt.”
On this Scipio laughed, and added, “What would you have said if you had conquered me? ”
“Then I would have placed Hannibal not only before Alexander and Pyrrhus, but before all other commanders.”
― B.H. Liddell Hart, Scipio Africanus: Greater than Napoleon

“Don Bradman will bat no more against England, and two contrary feelings dispute within us: relief, that our bowlers will no longer be oppressed by this phenomenon; regret, that a miracle has been removed from among us. So must ancient Italy have felt when she heard of the death of Hannibal.”
― R.C. Robertson-Glasgow

“Remember these Romans, Hannibal. For the time being, we must ally with them. But the day will come when we will have our vengeance upon them, as we will upon the demons of Harappa. Never forget that.”

The boy's voice was grave. “I'll remember.”
― Jennifer McKeithen, Atlantis: On the Tides of Destiny

“Hannibal excelled as a tactician. No battle in history is a finer sample of tactics than Cannae. But he was yet greater in logistics and strategy. No captain ever marched to and fro among so many armies of troops superior to his own numbers and material as fearlessly and skillfully as he. No man ever held his own so long or so ably against such odds. Constantly overmatched by better soldiers, led by generals always respectable, often of great ability, he yet defied all their efforts to drive him from Italy, for half a generation. …As a soldier, in the countenance he presented to the stoutest of foes and in the constancy he exhibited under the bitterest adversity, Hannibal stands alone and unequaled. As a man, no character in history exhibits a purer life or nobler patriotism.”
― Theodore Ayrault Dodge, Hannibal

“Es muy fácil confundir la comprensión con la simpatía. Deseamos la simpatía con tanta fuerza...
Puede que aprender a distinguirla forme parte del proceso de madurar. Es duro y desagradable darse cuenta de que alguien puede comprenderte sin tener que gustarle.”
― Thomas Harris, Hannibal

“For years Lecter had teased the problem, wanting very much for Hawking to be right the first time, for the expanding universe to stop, for entropy to mend itself, for Mischa, eaten, to be whole again.”
― Thomas Harris, Hannibal

“You're his friend, Jack. Why can't you leave him alone? 'Because it's his bad luck to be the best. Because he doesn't think like other people. Somehow he never got in a rut.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Es muy fácil confundir la comprensión con la
simpatía, por la desesperada necesidad de simpatía que todos sentimos.
Puede que
aprender a distinguirlas forme parte del proceso de madurar.
Es duro y
desagradable darse cuenta de que alguien puede comprenderte sin que ni siquiera le
gustes.”
― Thomas Harris, Hannibal

“There is much tradition and mystique in the bequest of personal weapons to a surviving comrade in arms. It has to do with a continuation of values past individual mortality. People living in a time made safe for them by others may find this difficult to understand.”
― Thomas Harris, Hannibal

“Clarice, I’m going to leave you here with these remains. Remains, Clarice. Scream your plight into his eyeholes and no reply will come.” He put his hands on the sides of her head. “What you need of your father is here, in your head, and subject to your judgment, not his.”
― Thomas Harris, Hannibal

“He would like to meet Lecter, talk and share with him, rejoice with him in their shared vision, be recog­ nized by him as John the Baptist recognized the One who came after, sit on him as the Dragon sat on 666 in Blake’s Revelation series, and film his death as, dying, he melded with the strength of the Dragon.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“He spoke to Tommy in the way a dog does speak. He came up to him, shook himself, put a paw on Tommy's trouser leg and tried to pull him in the direction from which he had just come.”
― Agatha Christie, Postern of Fate