(Elizabeth Bowen (1899-1973), British novelist, story writer, essayist, and memoirist; born in Ireland. From The House in Paris (1936). As quoted in Elizabeth Bowen, ch. 13, by Victoria Glendinning (1979).)
Atlas was permitted the opinion that he was at liberty, if he wished, to drop the Earth and creep away; but this opinion was all that he was permitted.
(Franz Kafka (1883-1924), Prague German Jewish author, novelist. The Fourth Notebook, 1918. The Blue Octavo Notebooks, ed. Max Brod, trans. by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins. Exact Change, Cambridge, MA (1991). Dearest Father: Stories and Other Writings, trans. by Ernst Kaiser and Eithne Wilkins, New York, Schocken Books (1954).)
Self-love for ever creeps out, like a snake, to sting anything which happens ... to stumble upon it.
(George Gordon Noel Byron (1788-1824), British poet. Ravenna Journal, vol. 8, entry for Jan. 11, 1821, Byron's Letters and Journals, ed. Leslie A. Marchand (1973-1981).)
Get outta here. Come on, fuckin' creep. Go to work.
(Waldo Salt (1914-1987), U.S. screenwriter, and John Schlesinger. Ratso Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman), Midnight Cowboy, hustler to peace demonstrator (1969).
Based On The Novel by Jam.)
The youngest of four sons, but not the youngest of the family!—you conceive the sort of negligence that creeps over even the kindest maternities, in such case ...
(Walter Pater (1839-1894), British writer, educator. Originally published in New Review (June 1892). the narrator, in "Emerald Uthwart," p. 174, repr. In Miscellaneous Studies, Macmillan (1895).
Posthumously prepared for the press by Charles L. Shadwell.)
God keep me from the divinity of Yes and No ... the Yea Nay Creeping Jesus, from supposing Up and Down to be the same thing as all experimentalists must suppose.
(William Blake (1757-1827), British poet, painter, engraver. Letter, April 12, 1827. The Letters of William Blake, ed. Geoffrey Keynes (1956).)
