The Silence of the Lambs Quotes
A collection of the best quotes from The Silence of the Lambs by your favorite characters including Clarice Starling.
annibal Lecter: First principles, Clarice. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?Clarice Starling: He kills women...
Hannibal Lecter: No! That is incidental. What is the first and principal thing he does, what need does he serve by killing?
Clarice Starling: Anger, social resentment, sexual frustration...
Hannibal Lecter: No, he covets. That's his nature. And how do we begin to covet, Clarice? Do we seek out things to covet? Make an effort to answer.
Clarice Starling: No. We just...
Hannibal Lecter: No. Precisely. We begin by coveting what we see every day. Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice? And don't your eyes move over the things you want?
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Hannibal Lecter: You know what you look like to me, with your good bag and your cheap shoes? You look like a rube. A well scrubbed, hustling rube with a little taste. Good nutrition has given you some length of bone, but you're not more than one generation from poor white trash, are you, Agent Starling? And that accent you've tried so desperately to shed? Pure West Virginia. What's your father, dear? Is he a coal miner? Does he stink of the lamb? You know how quickly the boys found you... all those tedious sticky fumblings in the back seats of cars... while you could only dream of getting out... getting anywhere... getting all the way to the FBI.
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Clarice Starling: Did you do those drawings, Doctor?
Hannibal Lecter: Ah. That is the Duomo scene from the Belvedere. You know Florence?
Clarice Starling: All that detail just from memory?
Hannibal Lecter: Memory, Agent Starling, is what I have instead of a view.
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Clarice Starling: Where are you, Dr. Lecter?
Hannibal Lecter: I've no plans to call on you, Clarice. The world is more interesting with you in it.
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Hannibal Lecter: Now then, tell me. What did Miggs say to you? Multiple Miggs in the next cell. He hissed at you. What did he say?
Clarice Starling: He said, "I can smell your c**t."
Hannibal Lecter: I see. I myself cannot. You use Evian skin cream, and sometimes you wear L'Air du Temps, but not today.
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Murray: Is it true what they're sayin', he's some kinda vampire?
Clarice Starling: They don't have a name for what he is.
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Clarice Starling: If you didn't kill him, then who did, sir?
Hannibal Lecter: Who can say. Best thing for him, really. His therapy was going nowhere.
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Hannibal Lecter: A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.
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Hannibal Lecter: Jack Crawford is helping your career isn't he? Apparently he likes you and you like him too.
Clarice Starling: I never thought about it.
Hannibal Lecter: Do you think that Jack Crawford wants you sexually? True, he is much older but do you think he visualizes scenarios, exchanges, f**king you?
Clarice Starling: That doesn't interest me Doctor and frankly, it's, it's the sort of thing that Miggs would say.
Hannibal Lecter: Not anymore.
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Hannibal Lecter: I will listen now. After your father's murder, you were orphaned. You were ten years old. You went to live with cousins on a sheep and horse ranch in Montana. And...?
Clarice Starling: [tears begin forming in her eyes] And one morning, I just ran away.
Hannibal Lecter: No "just", Clarice. What set you off? You started at what time?
Clarice Starling: Early, still dark.
Hannibal Lecter: Then something woke you, didn't it? Was it a dream? What was it?
Clarice Starling: I heard a strange noise.
Hannibal Lecter: What was it?
Clarice Starling: It was... screaming. Some kind of screaming, like a child's voice.
Hannibal Lecter: What did you do?
Clarice Starling: I went downstairs, outside. I crept up into the barn. I was so scared to look inside, but I had to.
Hannibal Lecter: And what did you see, Clarice? What did you see?
Clarice Starling: Lambs. The lambs were screaming.
Hannibal Lecter: They were slaughtering the spring lambs?
Clarice Starling: And they were screaming.
Hannibal Lecter: And you ran away?
Clarice Starling: No. First I tried to free them. I... I opened the gate to their pen, but they wouldn't run. They just stood there, confused. They wouldn't run.
Hannibal Lecter: But you could and you did, didn't you?
Clarice Starling: Yes. I took one lamb, and I ran away as fast as I could.
Hannibal Lecter: Where were you going, Clarice?
Clarice Starling: I don't know. I didn't have any food, any water and it was very cold, very cold. I thought, I thought if I could save just one, but... he was so heavy. So heavy. I didn't get more than a few miles when the sheriff's car picked me up. The rancher was so angry he sent me to live at the Lutheran orphanage in Bozeman. I never saw the ranch again.
Hannibal Lecter: What became of your lamb, Clarice?
Clarice Starling: They killed him.
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Total Quotes: 18