30+ of the best quotes from "The Shining"

A 1977 novel by horror master Stephen King, The Shining is famous for its eerie setting, the Overlook Hotel, an isolated old resort in the American Rockies. Jack Torrance, a writer and recovering alcoholic with a volatile temper, is hoping for peace and a fresh start with his wife, Wendy, and their young son when he accepts a job as the hotel's winter caretaker. But the Overlook has other plans. Danny Torrance, nicknamed "Doc" by his parents, starts displaying "the shining," psychic flashes revealing the hotel's sinister past inhabited by figures like the ghostly bartender Lloyd and the caretaker Delbert Grady. As the winter progresses, the Overlook's haunting influence escalates. Danny's visions, guided by his imaginary friend Tony, include chilling premonitions called "REDRUM." Jack gradually loses touch with reality as he terrorizes his family, showing how people can become monstrous under pressure. The terms of their stay, as outlined by manager Stuart Ullman, have become a trap.

Director Stanley Kubrick adapted The Shining into a blockbuster 1980 movie, which remains a cult classic for Jack Nicholson's performance of the unhinged Jack Torrance. The novel dives deeper into the toll of addiction and isolation. Wendy's desperate attempts to protect Danny from his father, and the intervention of the kindly chef Dick Hallorann, underscore King's exploration of the power of family bonds and dysfunction, the fragility of mental health, fear, and survival. Here are some of the best quotes from The Shining highlighting its key themes.

The best quotes from The Shining on mental health and human nature

1. "Sometimes human places, create inhuman monsters."

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

3. "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."

4. "Human Nature Baby, grab it and growl."

5. "The sleep of reason breeds monsters."

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

7. "He was the vulnerable one, the one who could be bent and twisted until something snapped."

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

9. "What Jack didn't understand was that no matter where he went, the same a**hole got off the plane."

10. "He had stopped drinking, but the need to be free had been just as great..."

11. "I never touched him. I never have since the night I broke his arm."

The best quotes from The Shining on perception and reality

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

2. "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."

3. "But it was a dreadful kind of curiosity, the kind that makes you peek through your fingers during the scariest parts of a scary movie."

4. "It was not just Danny the Overlook was working on. It was working on him, too. It wasn't Danny who was the weak link, it was him. He was the vulnerable one, the one who could be bent and twisted until something snapped."

5. "Nobody shines on all the time, except maybe for God up in heaven."

6. "But you shine the hardest."

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

The best quotes from The Shining on parenting and childhood

1. "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."

2. "Small children are great accepters. They don't understand shame or the need to hide things."

3. "The world don't love you, but your momma does and so do I."

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

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

6. "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."

7. "Go. Run away. Quick. And remember how much I love you."

The best quotes from The Shining on challenges and resilience

1. "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."

2. "She had never dreamed there could be so much pain in a life when there was nothing physically wrong."

3. "She hurt all the time. How much of it was her fault?"

4. "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."

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

6. "The wheels of progress; sooner or later they took you back to where you started from."