In the finished film Hannibal Lecter greets Clarice Starling exactly once by name, through the bars of a Memphis holding cage: “Good evening, Clarice.” The word “hello” is not spoken anywhere in The Silence of the Lambs. The popular version is not invented, though — it belongs to the sequel, where Lecter answers a phone with “Well, hello Clarice.”
“Hello, Clarice” Dr. Hannibal Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs (1991), screenplay by Ted Tally, from the novel by Thomas Harris. Commonly misquoted as "Hello, Clarice," a line Lecter never says in that film — he says "Well, hello Clarice" in the 2001 sequel, Hannibal.
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In context
Evoking the world of Ted Tally — American playwright and screenwriter. Theme: "Hello, Clarice". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Minimalist
Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "Hello, Clarice". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.
Provenance
The line, as transcribed from the film
Work
The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Screenplay
Ted Tally, from the 1988 novel by Thomas Harris; directed by Jonathan Demme
Spoken by
Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) — a fictional character
Scene
The Memphis holding cage — Lecter’s last face-to-face scene with Starling
Hannibal Lecter: [reading a book] Good evening, Clarice. Clarice Starling: I thought you might like your drawings back, Doctor. Just until you get your view.
Memphis — the last face-to-face
Transcribed from the finished film at Wikiquote ↗. Note that the undated screenplay draft published at IMSDb renders this same greeting as “Good afternoon, Clarice” — see the note below.
Wikiquote’s transcription of the film ↗ contains exactly one greeting from Lecter to Starling — “Good evening, Clarice” — and the word “hello” does not appear anywhere on the page. The raw wikitext was searched directly rather than read in summary.
Wikiquote’s Misquotations ↗ page carries a dedicated entry: the line “was never once used in the film itself,” though Lecter “does at one point utter a similar phrase of ‘Good evening, Clarice.’” Quote Investigator has no article on this phrase, so this entry is the anchor here.
The phrase is real, but it is the sequel’s. Wikiquote’s transcription of Hannibal (2001) ↗ has Lecter answering a phone: “Is this Clarice? Well, hello Clarice.” That screenplay is credited to David Mamet and Steven Zaillian.
A parody vector predates the sequel by five years: in The Cable Guy (1996) ↗, Jim Carrey’s Chip imitates Lecter and says “Hello, Clarice. It’s good to see you again.”
The Silence of the Lambs was released in 1991 and is firmly in copyright; nothing about this line is public domain. Screen writing is work-for-hire, so the rights sit with the film’s producer/distributor rather than with Ted Tally personally — Orion Pictures released the film, and Orion’s library is now owned by Amazon MGM Studios ↗. The single line is quoted here for identification and fact-checking.
Fact-check
Where it goes wrong
The error here is not who — it is what. Nobody is falsely credited: the film is real, the character is right, the actor is right. Only the words drifted, and then drifted into a different film.
✕
The wording“Hello, Clarice” never said
Wikiquote’s Misquotations ↗ entry states the line “was never once used in the film itself,” and that Lecter “does at one point utter a similar phrase of ‘Good evening, Clarice.’” Searching the full transcription ↗ returns no instance of “hello” at all.
✕
The filmThe Silence of the Lambs (1991) wrong work
The phrase exists — in the sequel. In Hannibal (2001) ↗, Lecter picks up Inspector Pazzi’s phone and says “Is this Clarice? Well, hello Clarice.” That screenplay is by David Mamet and Steven Zaillian, not Ted Tally, and it arrived a decade after the line people are quoting.
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The authorAnthony Hopkins, or Lecter himself actor, not author
Hopkins performed the line; Lecter is a fictional character. Neither wrote it. The screenplay credit for The Silence of the Lambs is Ted Tally’s ↗ alone, and it won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 64th Academy Awards.
✓The line people mean is “Good evening, Clarice” — from Ted Tally’s screenplay for The Silence of the Lambs (1991), transcribed here ↗. The line people say is “Well, hello Clarice” — and Lecter does not get around to saying it until 2001.
Context
Why this one sticks
“Hello, Clarice” is among the most quoted lines in American cinema, and it is missing from the film everyone quotes it from. Search a full transcription of The Silence of the Lambs and the word “hello” does not turn up once. What Lecter actually says, reading a book in a Memphis holding cage in his last face-to-face scene with Starling, is “Good evening, Clarice.”
What makes this misquote unusual is that it is not a fabrication — it is a filing error. The line is real; it is simply in the wrong film and the wrong decade. Parodists were already saying it by 1996, when Jim Carrey’s cable installer drops into a Lecter impression in The Cable Guy. Five years later the franchise itself said it out loud: in Hannibal, Lecter answers a dying man’s phone with “Is this Clarice? Well, hello Clarice.” Whether Mamet and Zaillian were winking at the misquote is not documented anywhere this page could verify. The effect was the same either way.
“Hello, Clarice” is not a memory of nothing. It is a memory of the sequel, filed under the original.
Two things this page cannot tell you
Whether the greeting is Harris’s or Tally’s. The film is adapted from Thomas Harris’s 1988 novel, and the Memphis cage scene exists in the book. Whether Harris wrote a greeting into it — and in what words — could not be checked: every scanned copy of the novel is lending-restricted, and full-text search inside them is gated. This page therefore credits the film’s credited screenwriter and makes no claim about the novel in either direction. Crediting a film with a line it inherited from its source book is a real and common error; it simply could not be ruled in or out here.
Who chose the word “evening.” The undated draft of Tally’s screenplay published at IMSDb ↗ reads “Good afternoon, Clarice,” and it differs from the finished film elsewhere in the same scene, so it is plainly an earlier version rather than the shooting script. Whether “evening” came from a later revision by Tally, from Jonathan Demme on the day, or from Hopkins himself is not something the available sources settle. Tally remains the film’s sole credited screenwriter.
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Filed under
More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.
b. 9 April 1952 · American playwright and screenwriter
William Theodore “Ted” Tally is an American playwright and screenwriter who came to film from the theatre, where he won an Obie Award for his play Terra Nova. His adaptation of Thomas Harris’s The Silence of the Lambs won the Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 64th Academy Awards, along with a Writers Guild of America Award and an Edgar from the Mystery Writers of America. He returned to the Lecter material a decade later, adapting Red Dragon (2002); his other credits include White Palace, All the Pretty Horses and 12 Strong.
For writers & researchers
Cite this
Primary source
Ted Tally, The Silence of the Lambs, screenplay, based on the novel by Thomas Harris (1988); directed by Jonathan Demme (Orion Pictures, released 14 February 1991). Line as transcribed at Wikiquote, “The Silence of the Lambs (film).” Misquotation documented at Wikiquote, “Misquotations.”
This verification page
Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Hello, Clarice’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/hello-clarice