"The only untruth I've pointed out has to do with the hand. In the movie. The book version of it is far more acceptable to me, and further in character - as it were - than the idea of me chopping off my own hand to save myself. Would it not be more understandable that I should ... oh yes. You said you'd only read the one book. I won't spoil it for you then."
Hannibal smiled.
"I am young. Yes. But does that mean that I don't do the things that you find yourself wondering about? Does it truly mean that I am devoid of the person that you know? Do I not become that in some future somewhere? Shouldn't there be some beginning to that? You cannot be so naive to think that I become an older gentleman and suddenly out of nowhere I am eating flautists and gnawing off the faces from prison nurses?" He lifted an eyebrow at her. "I can see you distancing the idea of youth from the character that you've seen before you sat here in front of me. But now that you've seen me and spoken to me, you must wonder at a beginning. I am twenty years old now, Doctor Cameron, I did not just pop into existence at this age, wouldn't you agree? I must have come from something. If there is a young Doctor Hannibal Lecter, then indeed, there must be something written about him."
His voice was softer now. Disguising some of the surety there'd been before. It was buried there. Almost indistinguishable, though. Another way to slither under Cameron's skin and stick with her for longer.
"And here we come back again to the idea that you can just go to the library and pick up said book. You can learn what it is that I've done and what I've been through. Except for the time I've spent here in The City, every part of me is written on a page. Is that fair to me? Can I not explore you as fully as you are capable of exploring me? Can I not roam the secret places of your mind as readily?"