The Silence of the Lambs Quotes (1991)
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.
Administrator: I don’t believe Lecter’s even seen a woman in eight years. And oh, are you ever his taste… so to speak.
Lecter: A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver. With some fava beans and a nice chianti.
Hannibal Lecter: Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center. Sounds charming.
Clarice Starling: That’s only part of the island. There’s a very, very nice beach. Terns nest there. There’s beautiful…
Hannibal Lecter: [cuts her off] Terns? If I help you, Clarice, it will be “turns” for us too. I tell you things, you tell me things. Not about this case, though. About yourself. Quid pro quo. Yes or no? [pause] Yes or no, Clarice? Poor little Catherine is waiting.
Clarice Starling: Go, doctor.
Jack Crawford: Starling?
Clarice Starling: Sir?
Jack Crawford: Miggs is dead.
Clarice Starling: Dead? How?
Jack Crawford: Well, the orderly heard Lecter whispering to him all afterrnoon and Miggs crying. They found him at bed check. He swallowed his own tounge.
Clarice: If you didn’t kill him then who did, sir?
Lecter: Who can say? Best thing for him, really. His therapy was going nowhere.
Clarice Starling: [Hannibal Lecter has escaped] He won’t come after me.
Ardelia Mapp: Oh really. How do you know?
Clarice Starling: He won’t. I can’t explain it… he – he would consider that rude.
Jack Crawford: Believe me, you don’t want Hannibal Lecter inside your head.
Hannibal Lecter: I do wish we could chat longer, but I’m having an old friend for dinner.
Lecter: Amputate a man’s leg and he can still feel it tickling. Tell me mum, when your little girl is on the slab, where will it tickle you?
Lecter: What became of your lamb, Clarice?
Clarice: He killed him.
Lecter: You still wake up sometimes, don’t you? Wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the lambs.
Clarice: Yes.
Lecter: And you think if you save poor Katherine, you can make them stop, don’t you? You think if Katherine lives, you won’t wake up in the dark ever again to that awful screaming of the lambs.
Clarice: I don’t know…. I don’t know.
Lecter: Thank you, Clarice.
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 desparately to shed? Pure West Virginia. What’s your father, dear? Is he a coal miner? Does he stink of olean? 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.
Clarice: You see alot, Doctor.
Hannibal Lecter: People will say we’re in love.
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.
Hannibal Lecter: Well, Clarice – have the lambs stopped screaming?
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