The Shining

Wendy? Darling? Light, of my life. I'm not gonna hurt ya. I'm just going to bash your brains in.

Monsters are real. Ghosts are too. They live inside of us, and sometimes, they win.

The world's a hard place, Danny. It don't care. It don't hate you and me, but it don't love us, either. Terrible things happen in the world, and they're things no one can explain. Good people die in bad, painful ways and leave the folks that love them all alone. Sometimes it seems like it's only the bad people who stay healthy and prosper. The world don't love you, but your momma does and so do I.

The tears that heal are also the tears that scald and scourge.

But see that you get on. That's your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on.

She had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there was nothing physically wrong. She hurt all the time.

He would write it for the reason he felt that all great literature, fiction and nonfiction, was written: truth comes out, in the end it always comes out. He would write it because he felt he had to.

Are you sure self-pity is a luxury you can afford, Jack?

Tough old world, baby. If you're not bolted together tightly, you're gonna shake, rattle, and roll before you turn thirty.

What Jack didn't understand was that no matter where he went, the same asshole got off the plane.

Living by your wits is always knowing where the wasps are.

Small children are great accepters. They don’t understand shame, or the need to hide things.

Once, during the drinking phase, Wendy had accused him of desiring his own destruction but not possessing the necessary moral fiber to support a full-blown deathwish. So he manufactured ways in which other people could do it, lopping a piece at a time off himself and their family.

Children have to grow into their imaginations like a pair of oversized shoes.

A lot of folks, they got a little bit of shine to them. They don't even know it. But they always seem to show up with flowers when their wives are feelin blue with the monthlies, they do good on school tests they don't even study for, they got a good idea how people are feelin as soon as they walk into a room.

I think all mothers shine a little, you know, at least until their kids grow up enough to watch out for themselves.

We sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives.

Human Nature Baby, grab it and growl.

You know, schizoid behavior is a pretty common thing in children. It’s accepted, because all we adults have this unspoken agreement that children are lunatics.

That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what.

God wiped snot out of his nose and that was you.

he looked to her like an absurd twentieth-century Hamlet, an indecisive figure so mesmerized by onrushing tragedy that he was helpless to divert its course or alter it in any way.

Any big hotels have got scandals," he said. "Just like every big hotel has got a ghost. Why? Hell, people come and go. Sometimes one of em will pop off in his room, heart attack or stroke or something like that. Hotels are superstitious places. No thirteenth floor or room thirteen, no mirrors on the back of the door you come in through, stuff like that. [...]

How many times, over how many years, had he—a grown man—asked for the mercy of another chance? He was suddenly so sick of himself, so revolted, that he could have groaned aloud.

The sleep of reason breeds monsters.

Danny? You listen to me. I’m going to talk to you about it this once and never again this same way. There’s some things no six-year-old boy in the world should have to be told, but the way things should be and the way things are hardly ever get together. The world’s a hard place, Danny. It don’t care. It don’t hate you and me, but it don’t love us, either. Terrible things happen in the world, and they’re things no one can explain. Good people die in bad, painful ways and leave the folks that love them all alone. Sometimes it seems like it’s only the bad people who stay healthy and prosper. The world don’t love you, but your momma does and so do I. You’re a good boy. You grieve for your daddy, and when you feel you have to cry over what happened to him, you go into a closet or under your covers and cry until it’s all out of you again. That’s what a good son has to do. But see that you get on. That’s your job in this hard world, to keep your love alive and see that you get on, no matter what. Pull your act together and just go on.

When we grow up, concepts gradually get easier and we leave the images to the poets