Communications
Dear Will,
A brief note of congratulations for the job you did on Mr.Lounds. I admired it enormously. What a cunning boy you are!
Mr Lounds often offended me with his ignorant drivel, but he did enlighten me on one thing - your confinement in the mental hospital. My inept attorney should have brought that out in court, but nevermind.
You know, Will, you worry too much. You'd be so much more comfortable if you relaxed with yourself.
We don't invent our natures, Will; they're issued to us along with our lungs and pancreas and everything else. Why fight it?
I want to help you, Will, and I'd like to start by asking you this: When you were so depressed after you shot Mr. Garrett Jacob Hobbs to death, it wasn't the act that got you down, was it? Really, didn't you feel so bad because killing him felt so good?
Think about it, but don't worry about it. Why shouldn't it feel good? It must feel good to God - He does it all the time, and are we not made in His image? You may have noticed in the paper yesterday, God dropped a church roof on thirty-four of His worshippers in Texas Wednesday night - just as they were groveling through a hymn. Don't you think that felt good?
Thirty-four. He'd let you have Hobbs.
He got 160 Filipinos in one plane crash last week - He'll let you have one measly Hobbs. He won't begrudge you one measly murder. Two now. That's all right.
Watch the papers. God always stays ahead.
Best,
Hannibal Lecter, M.D
Dear Will,
Here we are, you and I, languishing in our hospitals. You have your pain and I am without my books - the learned Dr. Chilton has seen to that.
We live in a primative time, don't we, Will? - neither savage nor wise. Half measures are the curse of it. Any rational society would either kill me or give me my books.
I wish you a speedy convalescence and hope you won't be very ugly.
I think of you often.
Hannibal Lecter.
Dr. Bloom: What do you think one of Will's strongest drives it? It's fear, Jack. The man deals with a huge amount of fear.
Jack Crawford: Because he got hurt?
Dr. Bloom: No, not entirely. Fear comes with imagination. It's a penalty, it's the price of imagination.