- Dr. Hannibal Lecter: In love you take leave of your senses but in hatred you must be present to calculate your actions.
- Dr. Hannibal Lecter: Don't go inside, Will. You'll want to retreat. You'll want it as the glint of the rail tempts us when we hear the approaching train. Stay with me.
- Will Graham: Where else would I go?
- Will Graham: You can't reduce me to... a set of influences. I'm not the product of anything. I've given up good and evil... for behaviourism.
- Dr. Hannibal Lecter: Then you can't say that I'm evil.
- Will Graham: You're destructive. Same thing.
- Dr. Hannibal Lecter: Evil is just destructive? Storms are evil, if it's that simple.
- Margot Verger: Are you scarred?
- Will Graham: Probably more than I know.
- Margot Verger: I'll show you mine if you show me yours.
- Dr. Hannibal Lecter: Did you kill him with your hands?
- Will Graham: It was... intimate.
- Dr. Hannibal Lecter: It deserves intimacy.
- Dr. Alana Bloom: But people are not instruments. Whatever it is you're playing, Hannibal, you have to listen very carefully to what you're creating.
- Dr. Hannibal Lecter: I'm listening. I'm listening to you.
- Dr. Hannibal Lecter: When you killed Randall, did you fantasize you were killing me? Most of what we do, most of what we believe, is motivated by death.
- Will Graham: I've never felt as alive as I did when I was killing him.
- Dr. Hannibal Lecter: Then you owe Randall Tier a debt.
- Dr. Hannibal Lecter: Apart from humane considerations, it's more flavorful for animals to be stress-free prior to slaughter.
- [Tastes meat]
- Dr. Hannibal Lecter: This animal tastes frightened.
- Will Graham: What does "frightened" taste like?
- Dr. Hannibal Lecter: It's acidic.
- Will Graham: The meat is bitter about being dead.
- [Both smile]