Creep Quotes

“This is women’s way of feeling time pass, that sinister clockwork inching round the roundness of the body; the slow gathering of endometrial cells, a nesting, a fluffing of pillows ready to receive guests, the ripeness of the womb, fleshy and welcoming, all neat and tidy and, yes, ready to receive guests, even one, just a casual visitor, anything. And then realisation that the arrival time has been and gone, and no one is coming; the tearing of the wallpaper, great swathes of it, and tears of disappointment, of ageing, of loneliness. The womb revolts and shudders. The painters are in.”
― Emma van Straaten, Creep

“Dear god is there not more to life than this? I sit and I watch others living their silly little lives, and I am ashamed to be a woman sometimes, though it is no wonder this is all we have: a desire to be small, to stay small. I know it well, from looking, from scorning, from wishing it were me. Berry-pickers, baby-raisers. Chaste and childlike. Burned at the stake. Ducked in the pond. Hanged by the neck. Stays, stomachers, corsets, girdles, Spanx, SKIMS; whalebone then steel then rubber then spandex, bodies winched into letters V and S, or numbers 1 and 8, gaining and losing value through body weight, beauty, and biological clocks. Mysterious, veering, treacherous codes: long, loose hair is innocent, until it’s whoreish; tanned flesh is lowly, until it’s exotic; cleverness is charming, until it’s embarrassing. With everything we give, we get smaller – and if we don’t, men take it anyway, pinching and nipping and penetrating. We pat creams around our eyes, cover upper arms, as men coarsen and grey good-naturedly.”
― Emma van Straaten, Creep

“Listlessness does not become you, my mother used to say, but I always had the feeling that nothing on earth would ever become me: listlessness, earnestness, short hair, fringes, dark nail varnish, stripes, bodycon, A-line, tomboyishness, girlishness,
androgyny, bohemian carelessness, New York uptightness, smartness, sports kit, sports, sweating, civility, dresses, make-up, wistfulness, confidence, prudishness, sexuality, sexlessness, body hair, body weight, being overweight, that T-shirt of my sister's that I longed for - the one that I stole and wore and spoilt. Your father's daughter, my mother would say, turning away.”
― Emma van Straaten, Creep

“I feel bruised; not my body, but my being, aching and soft and numb.”
― Emma van Straaten, Creep

“I would punish myself by pinching up fat handfuls of my thighs, my stomach, and twisting. I must have not done enough, not punished myself enough. My nails dig sickles into the padding of my palms.”
― Emma van Straaten, Creep

“Lost and aimless, I joined a drama society and met, or rather saw, a boy, the flame around which we, dull moths, amassed.”
― Emma van Straaten, Creep

“Three times this year, I have taken a sick day. I am never actually ill; no matter how throbbing the headache, wrenching the pain, thick the cold, weak the limbs, oppressive and weighty and anguished the thoughts, I go to work, banking the day as one owed to me – one last-minute, guilt-free day off (for, inexplicably, I know I would feel guilt otherwise), when I wake up and the sky is too blue to stay indoors, or the wind too bitter to go outside, my mind too wretched.”
― Emma van Straaten, Creep

“I fear old age, and death, the slipping away of youth. But don’t we all, I suppose?”
― Emma van Straaten, Creep