It

by Stephen King

Kids, fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.

The terror, which would not end for another twenty-eight years—if it ever did end—began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain.

It was the smell of something for which he had no name: the smell of It, crouched and lurking and ready to spring.

“They float,” it growled, “they float, Georgie, and when you’re down here with me, you’ll float, too—”

Your hair is winter fire, January embers. My heart burns there, too.

“But ih-is it r-r-really a cluh-cluh-clown?” “It’s a monster,” Richie said flatly. “Some kind of monster. Some kind of monster right here in Derry. And it’s killing kids.”

“Quaeque ipsa miserrima vidi, Et quorum pars magna fui.” —Virgil “You don’t fuck around with the infinite.” —Mean Streets

When the time comes, they will hear the voice of the Turtle.

If the wheels of the universe are in true, then good always compensates for evil—but good can be awful as well.

“There was a lot of bitterness about it, but what could we do? We had no real power. It was this young fellow, a Pfc. named Dick Hallorann who was a mess-cook, who suggested that maybe we could fix it up pretty nice if we really tried.

We grew up, he thought. We didn’t think it would happen, not then, not to us. But it did, and if I go in there it will be real: we’re all grownups now.

Maybe people really don’t change as much as we think. Maybe they just… maybe they just stiffen up.”

Since the turn of the year I’ve been keeping a journal. And when a man writes, he thinks harder… or maybe just more specifically.

He thrusts his fists against the posts and still insists he sees the ghosts.

If there are certain preconditions for the use of magic, those preconditions will inevitably arrange themselves.

Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up. His resolve was still strong, but it was a bitter resolve. Bitter.

And almost idly, in a kind of side-thought, Eddie discovered one of his childhood’s great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.

Maybe, he thought, there aren’t any such things as good friends or bad friends—maybe there are just friends, people who stand by you when you’re hurt and who help you feel not so lonely. Maybe they’re always worth being scared for, and hoping for, and living for. Maybe worth dying for, too, if that’s what has to be. No good friends. No bad friends. Only people you want, need to be with; people who build their houses in your heart.

Us Catholics also had the Inquisition, that was the little dealie with the rack and the thumbscrews and all that stuff. I figure all religions are pretty weird.”

said she was divorced down in Kittery and that she plays Bingo at Saint Mary’s in Bangor, and that real Christians don’t gamble, real Christians leave gambling for pagans and Catholics.

“You can’t be careful on a skateboard, man.” —some kid