Complete the "Silence of the Lambs" Quote Quiz

Answer: monster

All of these answers could be used to describe Hannibal Lecter, but the word that was used on this occasion was "monster". The first two lines were said by FBI Director Jack Crawford and Clarice Starling when he was briefing her in his office about interviewing Dr. Lecter.

After Clarice posed her question, the film quickly cut away to an establishing shot of the exterior of the asylum in Baltimore, and a voiceover by Dr. Chilton announced, "Oh, he's a monster", ostensibly the answer to her question. Director Jonathan Demme employed many interesting filming and editing techniques like this in crafting this memorable movie, and earned an Oscar for Best Director for his efforts.

Answer: her tongue

This line was said by Dr. Chilton to Clarice, while he was escorting her into the inner bowels of the asylum to meet Hannibal Lecter. Dr. Chilton was trying to impress on Clarice the importance of the safety protocols they had in place concerning Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter, by describing his attack on a nurse one day in July.

He even showed her a dog-eared photo of the nurse's injuries, and seemed to take some morbid pleasure in Clarice's reaction. The photo was never shown to the audience, leaving them to imagine the carnage inflicted by Lecter on his poor victim.

The tension created by this was palpable - the audience was kept on the edge of their seats, anticipating a crazed and violent killer, but their expectations were subverted when the first shot of Lecter revealed him to be polite and almost serene, standing motionless in the middle of his prison cell.

Answer: L'Air du Temps

Lecter said this to Clarice when he met her for the first time. He had asked to see her credentials, and made her hold it right up to the glass barricade of his cell. ("Closer please. Clo-ser.") Lecter probably took the opportunity to catch a whiff of the inside of Clarice's handbag when she removed her I.D. from it, which is how he detected the type of skin cream and perfume she used. Lecter's remark had a dual effect on Clarice; it unnerved her - she was visibly discomforted by the revelation of these personal details about her, and quickly changed the subject to the drawings in Lecter's cell.

It also set the tone for all of Clarice's dealings with Lecter - he would always have the upper hand because she couldn't hide anything from his keen powers of observation. Anthony Hopkins won the Oscar for Best Actor for his portrayal of the steel-cold Dr. Lecter.

Answer: rube

A "rube" is a derogatory term used in North America to refer to someone from a rural area who lacks polish and sophistication. When Clarice tried to push Lecter to answer her questionnaire, he said the above line to her to put her in her place. He went on to say, "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?" His goal was to humiliate Clarice, for he had detected that she had "tried so desperately to shed" her West Virginian accent, and inferred that she was probably ashamed of her background. Clarice's destroyed look as Lecter ripped into her was a sight to behold, and Jodie Foster won the Oscar for Best Actress for her portrayal of Clarice.

Answer: Death's-head moth

After Clarice recovered a moth from behind the soft palate of one of Buffalo Bill's victims, she brought it to the Smithsonian's Museum of Natural History for analysis. This line was said by the entomologist, who identified the species of moth for Clarice as Acherontia styx, or the Death's-head moth, so named because of the naturally occurring skull-shaped pattern on its thorax. Fittingly, the moth's scientific name was derived from the names of two rivers in Hell in Greek mythology - the Acheron and the Styx. Later in the film, the significance of the moth was explained by Lecter to Clarice as being symbolic for change - "caterpillar into chrysalis or pupa, from thence into beauty". Buffalo Bill's pathology was that he was seeking a way to become reborn through his killings because he hated his own identity, and he used the moth as a symbol of the transformation he hoped to undergo.

Although the book and the film both indicated the moth used by Buffalo Bill to be Acherontia styx, the species actually depicted in the film and on the movie's poster was really Acherontia atropos, a slightly different species within the same family.

The filmmakers must have decided that this species was more photogenic than Acherontia styx.

Answer: lotion

Buffalo Bill had kidnapped Catherine Martin, the daughter of Senator Ruth Martin, and was keeping her in a deep pit in the basement of a house in Belvedere, Ohio. He would say the quoted line to Catherine as he lowered a bottle of lotion into the pit, using a basket tied to the end of some string. Bill's use of the impersonal pronoun "it" to refer to Catherine can be contrasted with Senator Martin's televised plea for her life, which employed numerous photos of Catherine and repeatedly referred to her by her name. Senator Martin was trying to make Catherine's kidnapper see her as a person instead of an object, while Bill was clearly dehumanizing Catherine to make it easier for him to do what he had to do when the time came to kill her.

Answer: covets

To "covet" means to wish, crave or long for something, usually in an inordinate or wrongful manner. Lecter used this word to educate Clarice on Buffalo Bill's true nature. The women he preyed on all represented something that Buffalo Bill desperately wanted, and with each victim he believed that he was moving closer to that goal. Lecter also lent his insight on how a person covets - one does not seek out things to covet, but covets what they see every day. ("Don't you feel eyes moving over your body, Clarice? And don't your eyes seek out the things you want?") This information later proved to be instrumental in helping Clarice discover the true identity of Buffalo Bill.

Answer: fool's gold

When Lecter revealed the true identity of Buffalo Bill to be Louis Friend, in exchange for a transfer to another prison in Tennessee, Clarice became suspicious about the relative ease with which he gave up such valuable information. Lecter had previously demonstrated a fondness for anagrams (he had sent Clarice to seek out a storage facility leased by one Hester Mofet, an anagram for "the rest of me", which meant that Lecter had rented the facility), and she quickly discovered that "Louis Friend" was an anagram for "iron sulfide", also known as iron pyrite or fool's gold.

She therefore knew that Lecter was sending the authorities on a wild goose chase, and said this line to him, when she confronted him about it. The term "fool's gold" came to be used to describe any treasure or bounty that turned out to be worthless, after Martin Frobisher led a series of expeditions in the mid 16th century to transport 200 tons of iron sulfide from Greenland back to England, thinking it to be precious gold.

Answer: liar

This line was said by Clarice's friend, Ardelia, who was reading out loud a note that Dr. Lecter had left for her, on a map showing the locations where Buffalo Bill's victims were found in various rivers. Lecter was pointing out that there was, in fact, no pattern to the random scattering of the bodies of Bill's victims.

This was significant because Bill was attempting to draw attention away from his first victim, Frederica Bimmel, who happened to be the only body Bill weighed down. Just like a bad liar would attempt to compensate for telling a lie by over-elaborating, Bill was dumping the bodies of his subsequent victims in a "desperately random" fashion in the hopes that the authorities would not focus too much on his very first victim. This coupled with the earlier revelation about the true nature of Buffalo Bill ("He covets.") made Clarice realize that Bill was trying to detract from the fact that he had known Frederica, who had fallen victim to his covetous nature.

Answer: screaming

As part of the arrangement she reached with Lecter, Clarice had agreed to tell him personal details about herself in exchange for his assistance on the Buffalo Bill case. She had earlier revealed to Lecter that her worst memory of childhood was the death of her father, and that after he was killed, she was sent to live with cousins on a sheep and horse ranch in Montana. When Clarice went to Lecter one last time for help on the case, he refused to tell her anything else until she told him why she had left the ranch after only two months. Clarice reluctantly disclosed that she heard a strange noise one morning that sounded like a child screaming, which turned out to be the sound of the spring lambs being slaughtered. She tried to free them, but they wouldn't run, so she took one lamb and ran away as fast as she could. She was eventually picked up by the sheriff, and the rancher was so angry that he sent her away to an orphanage.

Lecter seemed almost intoxicated by Clarice's recounting of this painful event from her childhood, and he made the above observation about her, after she completed her story. He went on to say, "And you think if you save poor Catherine, you could make them stop, don't you? You think if Catherine lives, you won't wake up in the dark ever again to that awful screaming of the lambs." This insight into Clarice's motivation for pursuing a career in law enforcement was one of many high points of the film, and was topped only by Lecter's thrilling escape from incarceration and the capture of Buffalo Bill. The film went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture, and was only the third film in the history of the Academy Awards to win all five of the top awards (after "It Happened One Night" and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest").