I don't like the idea that I am going to come back as an ant or a sparrow if I don't get along in the great karma of life.

If you're going into a very dark place, then you should take a bright light, and shine it on everything. If you don't want to see, why in God's name would you dare the dark at all?

The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world, nothing is left to chance ... or change. Once such incantatory phrases as "we see now through a glass darkly" and "mysterious are the ways". He chooses His wonders to perform" are mastered, logic can be happily tossed out the window". Religious mania is one of the few infallible ways of responding to the world's vagaries, because it totally eliminates pure accident. To the true religious maniac, it's all on purpose.

The Overlook was still not done with him. Written on the mirror, not in lipstick but in blood, was a single word: REDRUM

Symbolism exists to adorn and enrich, not to create an artificial sense of profundity.

You learned to accept, or you ended up in a small room writing letters home with Crayolas.

Stories are artifacts, not really made things which we create and can take credit for, but pre-existing objects which we dig up.