Red Dragon Quotes

“It's fear, Jack. The man deals with a huge amount of fear.'
Because he got hurt?'
No, not entirely. Fear comes with imagination, it's a penalty, it's the price of imagination.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“It's hard to have anything isn't it? Rare to get it, hard to keep it. This is a damn slippery planet.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Fear comes with imagination, it’s a penalty, it’s the price of imagination.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“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.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Graham had a lot of trouble with taste. Often his thoughts were not tasty. There were no effective partitions in his mind. What he saw and learned touched everything else he knew. Some of the combinations were hard to live with. But he could not anticipate them, could not block and repress. His learned values of decency and propriety tagged along, shocked at his associations, appalled at his dreams; sorry that in the bone arena of his skull there were no forts for what he loved. His associations came at the speed of light. His value judgments were at the pace of a responsive reading. They could never keep up and direct his thinking. He viewed his own mentality as grotesque but useful, like a chair made of antlers. There was nothing he could do about it.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

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

“One can only see what one observes, and one observes only things which are already in the mind.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“What he has in addition is pure empathy and projection,” Dr. Bloom said. “He can assume your point of view, or mine – and maybe some other points of view that scare and sicken him. It’s an uncomfortable gift, Jack. Perception’s a tool that’s pointed on both ends.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“I am the dragon, and you call me insane.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Shiloh isn’t haunted – men are haunted.
Shiloh doesn’t care.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“The very air had screams smeared on it. He flinched from the noise in this silent room.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“He was numb except for dreading the loss of numbness.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Lecter is so lucid, so perceptive; he's trained in psychiatry... and he's a mass murderer.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Don't think you can persuade me with appeals to my intellectual vanity.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“There is no murder. We make murder, and it matters only to us.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“He’s a monster. I think of him as one of those pitiful things that are born in hospitals from time to time. They feed it, and keep it warm, but they don’t put it on the machines and it dies. Lecter is the same way in his head, but he looks normal and nobody could tell.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“In her way, she was a hard one. Faith in any sort of natural justice was nothing but a night light; she knew of that. Whatever she did, she would end the same way with everyone does: flat on her back with a tube in her nose, wondering, "Is this all?”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Intense fear comes in waves; the body can’t stand it for long at a time.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“To write a novel, you begin with what you can see and then you add what came before and what came after.

...You must understand that when you are writing a novel you are not making anything up. It's all there and you just have to find it.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“When Will Graham could open his right eye, he saw the clock and knew where he was- an intensive-care unit. He knew to watch the clock. Its movement assured him that this was passing, would pass. That's what it was there for.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Because it's his bad luck to be the best.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“When you were so depressed after you shot Mr. Garrett Jacob Hobbs to death, it wasn’t the act that got you down, was it? Really, didn’t you feel so bad because killing him felt so good? Think about it, but don’t worry about it. Why shouldn’t it feel good? It must feel good to God—He does it all the time, and are we not made in His image?”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Before Me you are a slug in the sun. You are privy to a great Becoming and you recognize nothing. You are an ant in the after-birth.
It is in your nature to do one thing correctly: before Me you rightly tremble. Fear is not what you owe Me, Lounds, you and the other pismires. You owe Me awe.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Do you know how you caught me, Will?'

'Good-bye, Dr. Lecter. You can leave messages for me at the number on the file.' Graham walked away.

'Do you know how you caught me?'

Graham was out of Lecter's sight now, and he walked faster toward the far steel door.

'The reason you caught me is that we're just alike' was the last thing Graham heard as the steel door closed behind him.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“In making friends, she was wary of people who foster dependency and feed on it. She had been involved with a few--the blind attract them, and they are the enemy.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“In the Green Machine there is no mercy; we make mercy, manufacture it in parts that have overgrown our basic reptile brain. There is no murder. We make murder, and it matters only to us.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“You didn’t draw a freak. You drew a man with a freak on his back. Nothing wrong with you, kid.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon

“When you feel strain, keep your mouth shut if you can.”
― Thomas Harris, Red Dragon