It

It

by

Stephen King

Bill, sometimes also called “Big Bill” due to his height, is the unofficial leader of the Losers’ Club—a motley group of adolescent social outcasts who are brought together through their mutual experiences of being bullied by Henry Bowers and of the evil supernatural forces that rule Derry’s sewers. He is the son of Zack and Sharon Denbrough and the older brother of George Denbrough. At the age of three, he is hit by a car and knocked into the side of a building, an accident that left him unconscious for seven hours and that becomes his mother’s explanation for his persistent stutter. Bill is sent to a speech school in Bangor where he learns techniques to correct his stutter, such as reciting a poem, which he uses later to help him combat It. When George is killed by Pennywise the Dancing Clown, Bill is ten years old and a student at Derry Elementary School. After George’s death, Bill’s parents shut him out, which he internalizes as a sense that he is partly responsible for George’s death and that they value him less than they did his younger brother. Around the time that he befriends the other members of the Losers’ Club, he gets an oversized bike that he calls “Silver.” Bill writes a novel about ghosts while still a student at the University of Maine and supports himself by working part-time in a textile mill. Bill becomes a successful author at the age of twenty-three and his next book, The Black Rapids, is an even greater success. The book is adapted into a film entitled Pit of the Black Demon and stars his future wife, Audra Phillips. In adulthood, Bill is described as a tall, balding man. He is the novel’s protagonist because he leads the pursuit of It, spurred both by the death of his younger brother as well as his wish to quell the darker forces in his life.

William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough Quotes in It

The It quotes below are all either spoken by William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough or refer to William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Evil and the Supernatural Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3 Quotes

What a bunch of losers they had been—Stan Uris with his big Jew-boy nose, Bill Denbrough who could say nothing but "Hi-yo, Silver!" without stuttering so badly that it drove you almost dogshit, Beverly Marsh with her bruises and her cigarettes rolled into the sleeve of her blouse, Ben Hanscom who had been so big he looked like a human version of Moby Dick, and Richie Tozier with his thick glasses and his A averages and his wise mouth and his face which just begged to be pounded into new and exciting shapes. Was there a word for what they had been? Oh yes. There always was. Le mot juste. In this case le mot juste was wimps…

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Richard “Trashmouth” Tozier / Richie , Stanley Uris , Beverly Marsh Rogan, Mike Hanlon
Related Symbols: Silver
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

There was no zipper on the thing's jacket; instead there were big fluffy orange buttons, like pompoms. The other thing was worse. It was the other thing that made him feel as if he might faint, or just give up and let it kill him. A name was stitched on the jacket in gold thread, the kind of thing you could get done down at Machen's for a buck if you wanted it. Stitched on the bloody left breast of the Werewolf's jacket, stained but readable, were the words RICHIE TOZIER.

Related Characters: It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Richard “Trashmouth” Tozier / Richie
Related Symbols: Silver
Page Number: 385
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

“If we have to call It something, it might as well be what we used to call It. I've begun to think, you see, that It has been here so long …whatever It really is…that It's become a part of Derry, something as much a part of the town as the Standpipe, or the Canal, or Bassey Park, or the library. Only It's not a matter of outward geography, you understand. Maybe that was true once, but now lt's…inside. Somehow It's gotten inside. That's the only way I know to understand all of the terrible things that have happened here—the nominally explicable as well as the utterly inexplicable.”

Related Characters: Mike Hanlon (speaker), It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough
Page Number: 509
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Glamour, he said, was the Gaelic name for the creature which was haunting Derry; other races and other cultures at other times had different words for it, but they all meant the same thing. The Plains Indians called it a manitou, which sometimes took the shape of a mountain-lion or an elk or an eagle [….] The Himalayans called it a tallus or taelus, which meant an evil magic being that could read your mind and then assume the shape of the thing you were most afraid of. In Central Europe it had been called eylak, brother of the vurderlak, or vampire. In France it was le loup-garou, or skin-changer, a concept that had been crudely translated as the werewolf, but, Bill told them, le loup-garou (which he pronounced “le loopgaroo”) could be anything, anything at all: a wolf, a hawk, a sheep, even a bug.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough (speaker), It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Eddie Kaspbrak
Page Number: 683
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

He saw the gratitude in their eyes and felt a measure of gladness for them…but their gratitude did little to heal his own horror. In fact, there was something in their gratitude which made him want to hate them. Would he never be able to express his own terror […]? Because in some measure at least he was using them […] And was even that the bottom? No, because George was dead, and if revenge could be exacted at all, Bill suspected it could only be exacted on behalf of the living. And what did that make him? A selfish little shit waving a tin sword and trying to make himself look like King Arthur? Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up. His resolve was still strong, but it was bitter resolve. Bitter.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough (speaker), It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, George Elmer Denbrough / “Georgie” , Will Hanlon
Page Number: 742
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

He would kill them all, his tormentors, and then those feelings—that he was losing his grip, that he was coming inexorably to a larger world he would not be able to dominate as he had dominated the playyard at Derry Elementary, that in the wider world the fatboy and the nigger and the stuttering freak might somehow grow larger while he somehow only grew older—would be gone.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Mike Hanlon, Henry Bowers , Reginald “Belch” Huggins , Victor Criss
Page Number: 964
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

Bill marked it as a paper boat. Stan saw it as a bird rising toward the sky—a phoenix, perhaps. Michael saw a hooded face—that of crazy Butch Bowers, perhaps, if it could only be seen. Richie saw two eyes behind a pair of spectacles. Beverly saw a hand doubled up into a fist. Eddie believed it to be the face of the leper, all sunken eyes and wrinkled snarling mouth—all disease, all sickness, was stamped into that face. Ben Hanscom saw a tattered pile of wrappings and seemed to smell old sour spices […] Henry Bowers would see it as the moon, full, ripe…and black.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Richard “Trashmouth” Tozier / Richie , Eddie Kaspbrak , Beverly Marsh Rogan, Mike Hanlon, Henry Bowers , Oscar “Butch” Bowers
Related Symbols: The Paper Boat
Page Number: 1048
Explanation and Analysis:
Epilogue Quotes

He touches his wife's smooth back as she sleeps her warm sleep and dreams her own dreams; he thinks that it is good to be a child, but it is also good to be grownup and able to consider the mystery of childhood…its beliefs and desires, I will write about all of this one day, he thinks, and knows it's just a dawn thought, an after-dreaming thought. But it's nice to think so for awhile in the morning's clean silence, to think that childhood has its own sweet secrets and confirms mortality, and that mortality defines all courage and love. To think that what has looked forward must also look back, and that each life makes its own imitation of immortality: a wheel.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Audra Phillips
Related Symbols: Silver
Page Number: 1152
Explanation and Analysis:
Get the entire It LitChart as a printable PDF.
It PDF

William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough Quotes in It

The It quotes below are all either spoken by William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough or refer to William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough . For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
Evil and the Supernatural Theme Icon
).
Chapter 3 Quotes

What a bunch of losers they had been—Stan Uris with his big Jew-boy nose, Bill Denbrough who could say nothing but "Hi-yo, Silver!" without stuttering so badly that it drove you almost dogshit, Beverly Marsh with her bruises and her cigarettes rolled into the sleeve of her blouse, Ben Hanscom who had been so big he looked like a human version of Moby Dick, and Richie Tozier with his thick glasses and his A averages and his wise mouth and his face which just begged to be pounded into new and exciting shapes. Was there a word for what they had been? Oh yes. There always was. Le mot juste. In this case le mot juste was wimps…

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Richard “Trashmouth” Tozier / Richie , Stanley Uris , Beverly Marsh Rogan, Mike Hanlon
Related Symbols: Silver
Page Number: 70
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 8 Quotes

There was no zipper on the thing's jacket; instead there were big fluffy orange buttons, like pompoms. The other thing was worse. It was the other thing that made him feel as if he might faint, or just give up and let it kill him. A name was stitched on the jacket in gold thread, the kind of thing you could get done down at Machen's for a buck if you wanted it. Stitched on the bloody left breast of the Werewolf's jacket, stained but readable, were the words RICHIE TOZIER.

Related Characters: It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Richard “Trashmouth” Tozier / Richie
Related Symbols: Silver
Page Number: 385
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 10 Quotes

“If we have to call It something, it might as well be what we used to call It. I've begun to think, you see, that It has been here so long …whatever It really is…that It's become a part of Derry, something as much a part of the town as the Standpipe, or the Canal, or Bassey Park, or the library. Only It's not a matter of outward geography, you understand. Maybe that was true once, but now lt's…inside. Somehow It's gotten inside. That's the only way I know to understand all of the terrible things that have happened here—the nominally explicable as well as the utterly inexplicable.”

Related Characters: Mike Hanlon (speaker), It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough
Page Number: 509
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 13 Quotes

Glamour, he said, was the Gaelic name for the creature which was haunting Derry; other races and other cultures at other times had different words for it, but they all meant the same thing. The Plains Indians called it a manitou, which sometimes took the shape of a mountain-lion or an elk or an eagle [….] The Himalayans called it a tallus or taelus, which meant an evil magic being that could read your mind and then assume the shape of the thing you were most afraid of. In Central Europe it had been called eylak, brother of the vurderlak, or vampire. In France it was le loup-garou, or skin-changer, a concept that had been crudely translated as the werewolf, but, Bill told them, le loup-garou (which he pronounced “le loopgaroo”) could be anything, anything at all: a wolf, a hawk, a sheep, even a bug.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough (speaker), It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Eddie Kaspbrak
Page Number: 683
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14 Quotes

He saw the gratitude in their eyes and felt a measure of gladness for them…but their gratitude did little to heal his own horror. In fact, there was something in their gratitude which made him want to hate them. Would he never be able to express his own terror […]? Because in some measure at least he was using them […] And was even that the bottom? No, because George was dead, and if revenge could be exacted at all, Bill suspected it could only be exacted on behalf of the living. And what did that make him? A selfish little shit waving a tin sword and trying to make himself look like King Arthur? Oh Christ, he groaned to himself, if this is the stuff adults have to think about I never want to grow up. His resolve was still strong, but it was bitter resolve. Bitter.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough (speaker), It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, George Elmer Denbrough / “Georgie” , Will Hanlon
Page Number: 742
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 19 Quotes

He would kill them all, his tormentors, and then those feelings—that he was losing his grip, that he was coming inexorably to a larger world he would not be able to dominate as he had dominated the playyard at Derry Elementary, that in the wider world the fatboy and the nigger and the stuttering freak might somehow grow larger while he somehow only grew older—would be gone.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Mike Hanlon, Henry Bowers , Reginald “Belch” Huggins , Victor Criss
Page Number: 964
Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 21 Quotes

Bill marked it as a paper boat. Stan saw it as a bird rising toward the sky—a phoenix, perhaps. Michael saw a hooded face—that of crazy Butch Bowers, perhaps, if it could only be seen. Richie saw two eyes behind a pair of spectacles. Beverly saw a hand doubled up into a fist. Eddie believed it to be the face of the leper, all sunken eyes and wrinkled snarling mouth—all disease, all sickness, was stamped into that face. Ben Hanscom saw a tattered pile of wrappings and seemed to smell old sour spices […] Henry Bowers would see it as the moon, full, ripe…and black.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Ben “Haystack” Hanscom, Richard “Trashmouth” Tozier / Richie , Eddie Kaspbrak , Beverly Marsh Rogan, Mike Hanlon, Henry Bowers , Oscar “Butch” Bowers
Related Symbols: The Paper Boat
Page Number: 1048
Explanation and Analysis:
Epilogue Quotes

He touches his wife's smooth back as she sleeps her warm sleep and dreams her own dreams; he thinks that it is good to be a child, but it is also good to be grownup and able to consider the mystery of childhood…its beliefs and desires, I will write about all of this one day, he thinks, and knows it's just a dawn thought, an after-dreaming thought. But it's nice to think so for awhile in the morning's clean silence, to think that childhood has its own sweet secrets and confirms mortality, and that mortality defines all courage and love. To think that what has looked forward must also look back, and that each life makes its own imitation of immortality: a wheel.

Related Characters: William “Stuttering Bill” Denbrough , Audra Phillips
Related Symbols: Silver
Page Number: 1152
Explanation and Analysis: