Hannibal Lecter: Given the chance, you would deny me my life, wouldn't you?
Clarice Starling: Not your life.
Hannibal Lecter: Just my freedom. You'd take that from me.
Hannibal Lecter: Are you by any chance trying to trace my whereabouts, you naughty girl?
Mason Verger: Isn't it funny?
Clarice Starling: What's that?
Mason Verger: You can look at my face, but you shied when I said the name of God.
Hannibal Lecter: You see, the brain itself feels no pain if that concerns you, Clarice.
Hannibal Lecter: Paul, remember what I said. If you can't be polite to our guests, you have to sit at the kiddies' table.
Hannibal Lecter: "Io fei gibetto de le mei case." I made my own home be my gallows.
Hannibal Lecter: On a related note I must confess to you, I'm giving very serious thought... to eating your wife.
Hannibal Lecter: Okey-dokey, let's drag these down. They must be as heavy as bodies.
Hannibal Lecter: I came halfway around the world to watch you run, Clarice. Let me run, eh?
Hannibal Lecter: Have you met my friend Mason Verger?
Clarice Starling: Yes
Hannibal Lecter: Face to face, so to speak?
Clarice Starling: Face to face.
Hannibal Lecter: Attractive, isn't he?
Barney: Do you ever think he might come after you? You ever think about him at all?
Clarice Starling: Well, at least thirty seconds of every day. I can't help it. He's always with me, like a bad habit.
Mason Verger: I have immunity from the Justice Department, and I have immunity from the Risen Jesus. And nobody beats the Riz!
Mason Verger: [watching a tourist's video of Hannibal, waving from the balcony after killing Pazzi] Tell me, Cordell, to you does that look like a wave goodbye... or hello?
Mason Verger: [as Barney opens a pastry box] I might be able to get a cookie down. What do you think, Cordell?
Cordell Doemling: I think it would kill you.
Mason Verger: You know, I thank God for what happened. It was my salvation. Have you accepted Jesus, Agent Starling? Do you have faith?
Clarice Starling: I was raised Lutheran.
Mason Verger: That's not what I asked.
Clarice Starling: Your profile at the border stations has five features. I'll trade you...
Hannibal Lecter: "Trade"?
Clarice Starling: Stop now and I'll tell you what they are.
Hannibal Lecter: How does that word taste to you, Clarice? Hmm? Cheap and metallic, like sucking on a greasy coin?
Clarice Starling: How did he end up at your house?
Mason Verger: I invited him of course... to my pied-à-terre. I came to the door in my nicest come-hither outfit. I was concerned... that he'd be afraid of me. But he didn't seem to be. Afraid of me. That's almost funny now.
Hannibal Lecter: Mason Verger doesn't want to kill me any more than I want to kill him. He just wants to see me suffer in some unimaginable way. He is rather twisted, you know.
Clarice Starling: Paul, what is it with you? I told you to go home to your wife, that was wrong?
Paul Krendler: Don't flatter yourself, Starling. That was a long time ago. Why would I hold that against you? Besides, this town is full of cornpone country pussy.
