Hannibal Lecter Transcripts: Hannibal S2E12

Will: Can you explain my actions? Can you posit my intentions? What would be your theory of my mind?

Hannibal: I have an understanding of your state of mind. You understand mine. We're just alike. This gives you the capacity to deceive me... and be deceived by me.

Will: I'm not deceiving you, Dr. Lecter. I'm just pointing out the snare around your neck. What you do about it is entirely up to you.

Hannibal: You put the snare around my neck. Why did you tell Mason Verger I want to kill him?

Will: I was curious what would happen. It's true, isn't it? You do want to kill him. Or you want me to kill him. Either way, you'd like him dead. I'm just... giving you a little nudge.

Hannibal: Mason is discourteous. And discourtesy is unspeakably ugly to me.

Will: Are you thinking about eating him?

Hannibal: Whenever feasible, one should always try to eat the rude.

Will: Free-range rude.

Hannibal: Would you join me at the table?

Will: Mason Verger is a pig and he deserves to be somebody's bacon. Maybe you should kill Mason during your next session.

Hannibal: He may be intending to kill me during our next session.

Will: Then you'll have to kill him first.

Hannibal: You said you were curious what would happen. I want you to close your eyes, Will. Imagine what you would like to happen. What did you see?

Mason: Good. Garbage. Shall we talk about what happened to poor Margot?

Hannibal: We can get to that later.

Mason: Oh, we can get to it now. Family affairs are best left to the family, Dr. Lecter, and you interfered.

Hannibal: I provided counsel.

Mason: You subverted me.

Hannibal: While you were subverting the underprivileged children at your summer camp. What did you learn?

Mason: Hmmm... Keen student of the Bible that I am... I learned about suffering. Not mine, mind you, but the general... conceit.

Hannibal: God's choices in inflicting suffering are not satisfactory to us, nor are they understandable, unless innocence offends him.

Mason: Clearly, he needs help in directing his blind fury with which he flogs this earth.

Hannibal: Margot's happiness is more important than her suffering.

Mason: You say that as though the two are mutually exclusive.

Hannibal: I believe they are.

Mason: Can never say to a certainty. It is one of those things that is... "hid"... as the Bible says. Papa taught me how to hide all sorts of things. This was his knife. I carry it around with me to remind me of him.

Hannibal: Whose fat are you planning to measure today, Mason? Mine?

Mason: No fat on you. Take more than a flesh wound to make you squeal. What game of chicken are you and the sperm donor playing, Dr. Lecter? Don't get me wrong. I play chicken with Margot all the time. I just don't tell her I'm playing. I'm good at chicken, Dr. Lecter. I never blink. Just send me the bill. I'm so sorry.

Margot: They could have done what was done laparoscopically, but my brother told them to leave a scar.

Will: He branded you.

Hannibal: Mason wants you to know this can never be undone.

Will: Mason can be undone.

Margot: Not without taking everything I have with him. He's all I've got now; that's exactly what he wanted. He won. He always wins.

Hannibal: This won't make you human, Margot, so much as give you the ability to make yourself human and move on.

Margot: There's no resolve to this. There's no resolution.

Will: Moving on isn't just a distraction... it's a rebuke. Show your brother how strong you are. Survive him.

Hannibal: We're maintaining our position on the event horizon of chaos.

Will: Your veneer of self-composure gives a strong sense of the surreal. So much about this feels like a dream.

Hannibal: Dreams prepare us for waking life.

Will: It's one thing to dream; it's another to understand the nature of the dream.

Hannibal: You're waking up to who you are. That's all you need to understand. There are extraordinary circumstances here, Will. And unusual opportunities.

Will: For whom?

Hannibal: For both of us.

Will: Mason Verger is an opportunity?

Hannibal: Mason Verger is a problem. Problem solving is hunting. It's a savage pleasure, and we are born to it. A pleasure we can share.

Will: You're fostering codependency.

Hannibal: Is that what I'm doing?

Will: Isn't that what you did to Abigail? Got her to take a life so she would owe you hers? I bond with Abigail; you take her away. I bond with... barely more than the idea of a child; you take it away. You saw to it that I alienated Alana, alienated Jack. You don't want me to have anything in my life that's not you.

Hannibal: I only want what's best for you.

Will: Please. Every moment of cogent thought under your psychiatric care is a personal victory.

Hannibal: You're applying yourself to my perspective as I've been applying myself to yours.

Will: You're right. We are just alike. You're as alone as I am. And we're both alone without each other.

Hannibal: Kholodets... A Ukrainian dish whose outcome can never be predicted. The Latin word gelatus translates as "frozen." Here, the aspic provides a three-dimensional canvas in which one may stage a scene.

Jack: The eternal chase.

Hannibal: An evocative shape in that at a certain point, it becomes unclear who's pursuing whom.

Jack: Well, in isolation, a moment can't really speak to motive, intent or aftermath.

Hannibal: Aspic is derived from bone... as a life is made from moments.

Jack: So, tell me, Hannibal, what, uh... what moment are we in now? You, me, Will?

Hannibal: Still harbouring doubts about Will?

Jack: Alana Bloom isn't harbouring any doubts. She's convinced that he murdered Freddie Lounds.

Hannibal: And you?

Jack: I am convinced of my general lack of trust in other people.

Hannibal: Lack of trust in other people increases the need for religion. If you can't rely on others, you have to rely on God.

Jack: I'm relying on myself. And yet in this moment, I have to confess that... I don't know who's pursuing whom any more than these fish do.

Hannibal: Whomever is pursuing whom in this very moment, I intend to eat them.

Carlo: Buongiorno, Dottore.

Hannibal: Buongiorno.

Carlo: Mr. Verger wants your company. Please, come with us.

Hannibal: I'd prefer not to.

Carlo: Matteo...

Hannibal: He shouldn't have done that.

Carlo: Buona sera... Dottore.

Hannibal: You are Sardinian. If you have to be kidnapped for ransom, a wealthy Italian will tell you it's better to fall into the hands of the Sards. And you're a professional revenger as well, I suspect.

Carlo: With you... it is personal now.

Hannibal: I take it Matteo didn't make it. Did he foul himself? I imagine he smells worse than you by now.

Mason: Kill him and you will get no money! Carlo! Carlo! Ha! Ha! Ho! Ho! Those little piggies are gonna go EEE-EEE-EEE-EEE all the way home. Haha! Yes! The swine may be shy with starting with the toes so we need to encourage them with a-little-sauce, huh? So we're gonna cut your throat.

Carlo: Padrone, he killed Matteo.

Mason: We can give Matteo's family Dottoroni's cojones, for comfort. Capisce?

Hannibal: He likes to cut low.

Mason: You are an odd psychiatrist. We could've had some good, funny times together. It's a damn shame! I've muzzled the dog; now, it's time for you to put him down. Don't bleed him out! Just... just a little nick. Just enough to give the pigs a taste.

Hannibal: Mason, I must ask you to be quiet.

Mason: Oh, shhh...

Hannibal: You'll frighten the animals.

Mason: Oh! Piggy, piggy, piggy, piggy. Piggy, piggy. Here, piggy, piggy. Ha! Ha! What? Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! What have you given me? Ha! Ha! Ha!

Hannibal: A variety of psychedelic compounds. "Psychedelic" so named from the Greek for "mind-revealing."

Mason: You need to write me a prescription for this, Doctor. Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Hannibal: Patients rhapsodize about the life-changing insights they achieve.

Mason: I am enchanted and terrified.

Hannibal: The world presents itself as a cacophony of sights, sounds, smells, recollections. I want you to recall your education in stockyards and slaughterhouses. Show me how Papa would check the depth of a pig's fat.

Mason: Here, piggy, piggy, piggy.

Hannibal: No, Mason. No. Show me on you.

Hannibal: What Mason is experiencing isn't restricted to reality, so... reality has to be forced to adapt.

Will: He fed his face to my dogs.

Hannibal: He broadened their palates as I broadened yours. Murder or mercy?

Will: There is no mercy. We make mercy... manufacture it in the parts that have overgrown our basic reptile brain.

Hannibal: Then there is no murder. We make murder too. It matters only to us. You know too well you possess all the elements to make murder. Perhaps mercy too, but murder you understand uncomfortably well.

Mason: I'm hungry!

Hannibal: Eat your nose then.

Mason: Eat my... eat my nose? I have a taste and consistency that's similar to that of a chicken gizzard.

Hannibal: Taste is housed in parts of the mind that precedes pity. Pity has no place at the table.

Mason: I'm full of myself.

Will: I'm not gonna kill him.

Mason: So full of myself.

Hannibal: He was going to feed you to his pigs... after he fed them me. Weren't you, Mason?

Mason: I was.

Will: He's your patient, Doctor. You do what you think is best for him.

Hannibal: Achilles lamenting the death of Patroclus. Whenever he's mentioned in The Iliad, Patroclus seems to be defined by his empathy.

Will: He became Achilles on the field of war. He died for him there, wearing his armor.

Hannibal: He did. Hiding and revealing identity is a constant theme throughout the Greek epics.

Will: As are battle-tested friendships.

Hannibal: Achilles wished all Greeks would die, so that he and Patroclus could conquer Troy alone. Took divine intervention to bring them down.

Will: This isn't sustainable. We're going to get caught.

Hannibal: Jack already suspects you killed Freddie Lounds.

Will: If Jack told you he suspects me, that means he suspects you.

Hannibal: I know.

Will: You should give him what he wants.

Hannibal: Give him the Chesapeake Ripper?

Will: Allow him closure. Reveal yourself. You've taunted him for long enough. Let him see you with clear eyes.

Hannibal: Jack has become my friend. I suppose I owe him the truth.