It

It

by

Stephen King

Ben is an overweight social outcast who has no friends until he meets the Losers’ Club. Richie nicknames Ben “Haystack” after the obese wrestler, Haystack Calhoun. Ben is known among adults for being exceptionally polite. Librarians appreciate that he is an avid reader and respectful of the library’s rules, while his fifth-grade teacher Mrs. Douglas appreciates him for being a good student. Ben raises the ire of Henry Bowers when he refuses to allow Henry to cheat off of him during a math test. This prompts Henry to corner Ben in the Barrens, where he tries to carve his name into Ben’s stomach, leaving a scar in the form of a capital “H” on Ben’s body into adulthood. Ben has a crush on Beverly Marsh. He writes and sends her a haiku and, in adulthood, they become a couple and relocate to Nebraska together, where Ben lives. Ben and his mother, Arlene Hanscom, first live together in Derry, then move to Nebraska, where Ben attends high school. In Nebraska, Ben loses weight by taking up running and “gets skinny.” He attends college in California. In adulthood, he is described as “handsome” and becomes an internationally renowned architect. He designs the BBC communications center in London, which he describes as the Derry Public Library’s glass corridor turned vertically. He owns his own Learjet, which he pilots, “and [has] a private landing strip on his farm in Junkins.”

Ben “Haystack” Hanscom Quotes in It

The It quotes below are all either spoken by Ben “Haystack” Hanscom or refer to Ben “Haystack” Hanscom. 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 4 Quotes

Ben could see the clown's face clearly. It was deeply lined, the skin a parchment map of wrinkles, tattered cheeks, arid flesh. The skin of its forehead was split but bloodless. Dead lips grinned back from a maw in which teeth leaned like tombstones. Its gums were pitted and black. Ben could see no eyes, but something glittered far back in the charcoal pits of those puckered sockets, something like the cold jewels in the eyes of Egyptian scarab beetles. And although the wind was the wrong way, it seemed to him that he could smell cinnamon and spice, rotting cerements treated with weird drugs, sand, blood so old it had dried to flakes and grains of rust…

Related Characters: It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, Ben “Haystack” Hanscom
Page Number: 217
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 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:
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Ben “Haystack” Hanscom Quotes in It

The It quotes below are all either spoken by Ben “Haystack” Hanscom or refer to Ben “Haystack” Hanscom. 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 4 Quotes

Ben could see the clown's face clearly. It was deeply lined, the skin a parchment map of wrinkles, tattered cheeks, arid flesh. The skin of its forehead was split but bloodless. Dead lips grinned back from a maw in which teeth leaned like tombstones. Its gums were pitted and black. Ben could see no eyes, but something glittered far back in the charcoal pits of those puckered sockets, something like the cold jewels in the eyes of Egyptian scarab beetles. And although the wind was the wrong way, it seemed to him that he could smell cinnamon and spice, rotting cerements treated with weird drugs, sand, blood so old it had dried to flakes and grains of rust…

Related Characters: It / Pennywise the Dancing Clown / Bob Gray, Ben “Haystack” Hanscom
Page Number: 217
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 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: