The Very Air Had Screams

Spaces Devoted To Hannibal Lecter’s Earliest Years Differ From The Other Archives In Being Incomplete. Some Are Static Scenes, Fragmentary, Like Painted Attic Shards Held Together By Blank Plaster. Other Rooms Hold Sound And Motion, Great Snakes Wrestling And Heaving In The Dark And Lit In Flashes. Pleas And Screaming Fill Some Places On The Grounds Where Hannibal Himself Cannot Go. But The Corridors Do Not Echo Screaming, And There Is Music If You Like.

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.

I Collect Church Collapses, Recreationally. Did You See The Recent One In Sicily? Marvelous! The Facade Fell On Sixty-five Grandmothers At A Special Mass. Was That Evil? If So, Who Did It? If He's Up There, He Just Loves It, Officer Starling. Typhoid And Swans - It All Comes From The Same Place.

He Sees Very Clearly - He Damn Sure Sees Through Me. It's Hard To Accept That Someone Can Understand You Without Wishing You Well. At Starling's Age It Hadn't Happened To Her Much.

I Think It's Easy To Mistake Understanding For Empathy - We Want Empathy So Badly. Maybe Learning To Make That Distinction Is Part Of Growing Up. It's Hard And Ugly To Know Somebody Can Understand You Without Even Liking You.