It

by Stephen King

“Everything’s a lot tougher when it’s for real. That’s when you choke. When it’s for real. ”

Maybe that’s why God made us kids first and built us close to the ground, because He knows you got to fall down a lot and bleed a lot before you learn that one

Home is the place where when you go there, you have to finally face the thing in the dark.

ONE IDEA LIGHTS A THOUSAND CANDLES. —Ralph Waldo Emerson

a Chilly Willy cartoon (for some reason the hat Chilly Willy wore always cracked Richie up),

Bill was also the strongest of them—and not just physically. There was a good deal more to it than that, but since Richie did not know either the word charisma or the full meaning of the word magnetism, he only felt that Bill’s strength ran deep and might manifest itself in many ways, some of them probably unexpected. And Richie suspected if Beverly fell for him, or “got a crush on him, ” or whatever they called it, Ben would not be jealous (like he would, Richie thought, if she got a crush on me); he would accept it as nothing but natural. And there was something else: Bill was good. It was stupid to think such a thing (he did not, in fact, precisely think it; he felt it), but there it was. Goodness and strength seemed to radiate from Bill. He was like a knight in an old movie, a movie that was corny but still had the power to make you cry and cheer and clap at the end. Strong and good. And five years later, after his memories of what had happened in Derry both during and before that summer had begun to fade rapidly, it occurred to a Richie Tozier in his mid-teens that John Kennedy reminded him of Stuttering Bill.

“N-Not y-yet, ” Bill said. He patted his pocket. “I g-g-got some buh-buh-buh-bullets in h-h-here. But my d-d-dad s-says s-sometimes you 1-look a-and th-then, i-if the g-g-g-gun th-thinks y-you’re not being c-c-careful, it l-loads ih-ih-itself. S-so it can sh-sh-hoot you. ” His face uttered a strange smile which said that, while he didn’t believe anything so silly, he believed it completely.

If you remember there is no such thing as an unloaded gun, you’ll be okay with firearms all your life, Richie.

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

Little Black Sambo

Because maybe It’s scared of us . . . really scared for the first time in Its long, long life.

The kid in you just leaked out, like the air out of a tire. And one day you looked in the mirror and there was a grownup looking back at you.

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.

Richie let Bill speak, knowing things would probably go easier that way—children made fun of Bill’s stutter; adults were embarrassed by it. Sometimes this was surprisingly helpful.

“Thank you, Bill, ” she said, and for one hot, smoking moment their eyes locked directly. Bill did not look away this time. His gaze was firm, adult. “W-W-W-Welcome, ” he said.

It always comes back to power. I love Beverly Marsh and she has power over me. She loves Bill Denbrough and so he has power over her. But—I think—he is coming to love her. Maybe it was her face, how it looked when she said she couldn’t help being a girl. Maybe it was seeing one breast for just a second. Maybe just the way she looks sometimes when the light is right, or her eyes. Doesn’t matter. But if he’s starting to love her, she’s starting to have power over him.

Beverly felt safe. Protected. The images of her father’s face and Henry’s knife seemed less vivid and threatening when they sat close like this. That sense of protection was hard to define and she didn’t try, although much later she would recognize the source of its strength: she was in the arms of a male who would die for her with no hesitation at all.

The fears of children could often be summoned up in a single face . . . and if bait were needed, why, what child did not love a clown?

as Bill pushed through the glass door, Beverly caught sight of something which she never spoke of but never forgot. For just a moment she saw their reflections in the glass—only there were six, not four, because Eddie was behind Richie and Stan was behind Bill, that little half-smile on his face.

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