Billy Summers

He thinks writing is also a kind of war, one you fight with yourself. The story is what you carry and every time you add to it, it gets heavier.

It’s just that if there’s a God, he’s doing a piss poor job.

There aren’t just 2 kinds of people, good and bad, like I thought when I was a kid who got most of his ideas on how people act from TV. There are 3. The third type of people go along to get along, like Deputy F.W.S. Malkin told me to do. Those are the most people in the world and I think they are gray people. They will not hurt you (at least on purpose) but they won’t help you much, either. They will say do what you want and God help you.

By then I was a teenager, and teenagers say anything to hurt when they are hurting.

Try to write your own story. Consider writing about yourself, or rewriting something in your life you wished had gone differently. Then, be brave and share with someone what you’ve written. How did this process feel for you?

Did you know that could happen? Did you know you could sit in front of the screen or a pad of paper and change the world? It doesn't last, the world always comes back, but before it does, it's awesome. It's everything, because you can have things the way you want. And I want you to still be alive. In the story you are, and always will be.

When I was writing, I forgot to be sad. I forgot to worry about the future. I forgot where I was. I didn’t know that could happen. I

I guess most jokes have some truth in them and that's what makes them funny.

Writing is good. He’s always wanted to do it, and now he is. That’s good. Only who knew it hurt so much?

He waits. The time passes. It always does.

there’s no sense worrying about what you can’t control. Doing that is a good way to go crazy.

Bad people need to pay a price. And the price should be high.

And way across, on the other side, this is crazy, but I thought I saw that hotel you talked about. Then I blinked my eyes—the wind was so strong they were tearing up—and when I looked again, it was gone.” Bucky doesn’t smile. “You’re not the only person who’s seen that. I’m not a superstitious man, but I wouldn’t go anywhere near where the Overlook Hotel used to stand. Bad stuff happened there.

God doesn’t have a plan, He throws pickup sticks.

Feelings are like breathing, they come in and go out.

Did you know that you could sit in front of a screen or a pad of paper and change the world? It doesn’t last, the world always comes back, but before it does, it’s awesome. It’s everything.

All over the world there are half-finished books - memoirs, poetry novels, surefire plans for getting thin or getting rich - in desk drawers, because the work got too heavy for the people trying to carry it and they put it down

Probably on one of those NPR shows where everyone sounds smart and full of Prozac

What I know is men like him are above justice in most cases. Except the kind we gave him.

Billy likes people, and he likes to keep them at arms’ length. It sounds like a contradiction, but it’s not.

He can’t change his past but he means to change his future. He also intends to have his payday. He earned it.

you make your plan and hope the stuff you don’t foresee won’t show up to bite you in the ass.

wouldn’t go anywhere near where the Overlook Hotel used to stand. Bad stuff happened there.

Billy doesn't care if it rains, sleets, snows, or shits bananas.

How do you know you're an idiot? Because if everyone is looking at you like they are now, you're an idiot.

...to see her sitting there and looking up at the stars, that means something. It might not if things go wrong, but right now it does. He gave her the mountains and the stars, not to own but at least to look at, and that means a lot.

...Billy doubts that any woman ever heals completely after being raped. It leaves a scar and he guesses that on some days the scar aches. He guesses that even ten years later--twenty, thirty--it still aches.

He has no problem with bad people paying to have other bad people killed. He basically sees himself as a garbageman with a gun.

Now he understands—he never did before, never even considered it—that any writer who goes public with his work is courting danger. It’s part of the allure. Look at me. I’m showing you what I am.