Up The Creek Quotes & Sayings

He was still a kid inside. His body had grown, stretched, towered, tanned its skin, hardened its muscle, darkened its tawny shock of long hair, tightened its lines around jaw and eyes, thickened fingers and knuckles, but the brain didn't feel as if it had grown in sympathy with the rest. It was still green, full of tall, lush oaks and elms in summer; a creek ran through it, and the kids climbed around on its convolutions shouting, This way, gang - we'll take a short-cut and head them off at Dead Man's Gulch! — Ray Bradbury

The manufacturer who finds himself up the creek is the short-sighted opportunist who siphons off all his advertising dollars for short-term promotions. — David Ogilvy

Argh!" Thalia pushed me, and a shock went through my body that blew me backward ten feet into the water. Some of the campers gasped. A couple of the Hunters stifled laughs.
"Sorry!" Thalia said, turning pale. "I didn't mean to - "
Anger roared in my ears. A wave erupted from the creek, blasting into Thalia's face and dousing her from head to toe.
I stood up. "Yeah," I growled. "I didn't mean to, either."
Thalia was breathing heavily.
"Enough!" Chiron ordered.
But Thalia held out her spear. "You want some, Seaweed Brain?"
Somehow, it was okay when Annabeth called me that - at least, I'd gotten used to it - but hearing it from Thalia was not cool.
"Bring it on, Pinecone Face! — Rick Riordan

We talk like we know what's going on, but we don't. We don't know anything. We're really young and we're gonna screw up a lot. We're gonna keep changing our minds and even sometimes our hearts. And through all that, the only real thing we can offer each other is forgiveness. I couldn't do that. Or at least, I did it too late. Don't make my mistake. Don't let yourself be so angry you stop loving. Because one day you'll wake up from that anger and the person you love will be gone. — Kevin Williamson

He finally saw the line went up into the big sycamore, gave it a tug and then studied on the whole thing while he toked on his pipe.
"That's exactly where I want it to be" he finally said and he went back to holding his pole like he was doing before, while looking at the creek.
"Up there wrapped around a limb?"
"I guess you ain't heard of squirrel fishing. — Charles Davis

...both he and she were creek beds, quiet when they were full and quiet when they were dry. But when they were half-full, wearing a coat of shallow water, the current bumped over the rocks and valleys in the creek beds, wearing down the earth. Giving someone else a little of who they were hurt more than giving up none or all of it. — Anna-Marie McLemore

If you gauge how you're doing on whether somebody is responding vocally or not, you're up a creek. You can't do that; you kind of have to be inside of your work and play the scene. And tell the story every day. Tell the story. Tell the story. Regardless of how people are responding, I'm going to tell the story. — Billy Porter

They all seemed hungry, happy, and healthy enough in their buzzing - oh the days were hot, and the noise of bees filled the air that was dusty with pollen and sun haze, and there were tiny black flies stuck to one another crowded by the creek and a creek stink rising from the deep pool under the willow tree where a wheat sack of new kittens had been drowned, and their tiny terrible struggling had shot like an electric current through the confusion of muddy water and up the arm of the person who had tied the stone around the mouth of the sack and thrust it into the water; and the culprit had not been able to brush away the current; it penetrated her body and made her heart beat with fear and pity. I was the culprit. — Janet Frame

floating there, twisting around a tree branch, and she shivered. There had been no trips to the park since the body had washed up there. She couldn't bring herself to do it. Both of the victims were from Jenkins Hollow. Both had red hair. Both had these rune symbols, which basically meant they were thought to be evil, marked women. How many more could there be? If it was a serial killer, how many others could fit this pattern? Just then the phone rang, and she nearly jumped off her chair. "Hello. Cumberland Creek Dance." "Vera Matthews please." "Speaking." "This is Jennifer Blake at the elementary school. There's been an emergency with Annie Chamovitz, and she has you listed as an emergency contact for her children. Can you pick her boys — Mollie Cox Bryan

Northwest Ohio is flat. There isn't much up. The land is so flat that a child from Toledo is under the impression that the direction hills go is down. Sledding is done down from street level into creek beds and road cuts. — P. J. O'Rourke

The Colt rested in her lap. "You better wake up in the morning, Mr. Latimer because I don't want to have to explain a dead man in my cabin to the sheriff."
- Emma in "Emma of Crooked Creek — MK McClintock

I found myself suddenly jealous of the time when things were simple, when days centered on creek walks and tetherball, and your biggest worry was whether you'd have riding or sailing. There were no boys, there were no secrets or rumors, and there were no regrets. Not even fear of regret. There was just a best friend and endless hours to fill with Pixy Stix and laughing so hard you couldn't breathe. — Kathryn Williams

So I'm up the ghostie creek without an EMF meter — JoAnne Kenrick

I'm holding up, Lord willing and the creek don't rise. — Sara Evans

Grief, he thought, would have an ending, but it was a black cat that ran across life, through good conversations and orange firelight and endless drills. It sat on his shoulders and made his knees creek when he stood up. It balanced in the crook of his arm as he cleaned his rifle. And he could not banish it; it was loyal as a dog. — Kathy Hepinstall

So that individuation may be compared to a pyramid in that it is only achieved by the placement of the top stone ... The Jews, Ford said. They ain't like anyone else I know. There goes you theory up shits creek. He smiled. — E.L. Doctorow

What I like about sceptics is that in good science you need critics that make you think: 'Crumbs, have I made a mistake here?' If you don't have that continuously, you really are up the creek. The good sceptics have done a good service, but some of the mad ones I think have not done anyone any favours. — James Lovelock

In other words, it's the familiar hot sinking feeling experienced by everyone who has let the waves of their own anger throw them far up on the beach of retribution, leaving them, in the poetic language of the everyday, up shit creek. — Terry Pratchett

Her face looked like the bottom of a dried up creek bed after a drought, — Carolyn Brown

But usually not. Usually she thinks of the path to his house, whether deer had eaten the tops of the fiddleheads, why they don't eat the peppermint saprophytes sprouting along the creek; or she visualizes the approach to the cabin, its large windows, the fuchsias in front of it where Anna's hummingbirds always hover with dirty green plumage and jeweled throats. Sometimes she thinks about her dream, the one in which her mother wakes up with no hands. The cabin smells of oil paint, but also of pine. The painter's touch is sexual and not sexual, as she herself is ... When the memory of that time came to her, it was touched by strangeness because it formed no pattern with the other events in her life. It lay in her memory like one piece of broken tile, salmon-coloured or the deep green of wet leaves, beautiful in itself but unusable in the design she was making — Robert Hass

Onward up many a frightening creek, though your arms may get sore and your sneakers may leak. Oh! The places you'll go! — Dr. Seuss

I loved that bridge he built over the creek in the back of the house. [ ... ] Or that baby bed he built for Ricky. I told him he didn't have to spend so much time on it, but he said it had to last, and the thing ended up weighing two hundred pounds and I couldn't move it. I said, 'How long does a baby bed have to last, anyway?' But maybe he thought if it was strong enough, it might keep Ricky a baby. — Marsha Norman

I'm a writer; I can float for hours on a word like "amethyst" or "broom" or the way so many words sound like what they are: "earth" so firm and basic, "air" so light, like a breath. You can't imagine them the other way around: She plunged her hands into the rich brown air. Sometimes I think I would like to be a word - not a big important word, like "love" or "truth," just a small ordinary word, like "orange" or "inkstain" or "so," a word that people use so often and so unthinkingly that its specialness has all been worn away, like the roughness on a pebble in a creek bed, but that has a solid heft when you pick it up, and if you hold it to the light at just the right angle you can glimpse the spark at its core. — Katha Pollitt

If everything that is happening in the world is traceable to our inability to understand what is happening in the world. If there is such a thing as original sin, it's the human capacity to get everything wrong, right from the beginning and all the way up to now, and that's what the old storytellers have been telling us, including the Creek Indians who told this story along with every other tribe on earth. — Gerald Hausman

The oaks and firs stood up as they reached the interstate and pushed on through the South West Pacific Highway to the Salmon River Highway, past places with names like Falling Creek, Tualatin, Joe Dancer Park, and Erratic Rock. Places you could walk out into and die and never be found. He could imagine them seared by sun in summer and shrouded in snow in winter. Hammered by hail the size of coins in spring and autumn, pounding flesh and smashing bone, processed to be carried off chunk by speck in the guts of birds. — Warren Ellis

Rock Creek is sacred and holy ground. How tremendous their heroism in the face of odds that are almost impossible to understand ... in terms of self-sacrifice, in terms of courage, in terms of faith, in terms of facing up to adversity, there is no greater example in the history of this nation ... We have a great inheritance ... a tremendous responsibility to live up to it. God bless us to be faithful, to be true to that which meant so much to those who died here ... — Gordon B. Hinckley

On the Big Blackfoot River above the mouth of Belmont Creek the banks are fringed by large Ponderosa pines. In the slanting sun of late afternoon the shadows of great branches reached from across the river, and the trees took the river in their arms. The shadows continued up the bank, until they included us — Norman Maclean

Yeah, a lot more than he likes you," said Oh. It didn't look like Milo appreciated the joke very much.
"That's debatable," said Milo.
"Is not," said Oh.
She leaned in and put her pink cast against my cheek, kissing me quickly on the lips.
"That's incredibly unfair. If we were gay you'd be up a creek without a paddle. You wouldn't even be in the game."
"He's right, you know," I said.
"Aw. You guys are having a bromance. That's really cute. — Patrick Carman

Call them pros, call them mercenaries - but in fact they are just grown - up kids who have learned on the frozen creek or flooded corner lot that hockey is the greatest thrill of all. — Lester Patrick

Sometimes back then, fishing with Jasper up the Sulphur, I hit my limit. I mean it felt my heart might just burst. Bursting is different than breaking. Like there is no way to contain how beautiful. Not it either, not just beauty. Something about how I fit. This little bend of smooth stones, the leaning cliffs. The smell of spruce. The small cutthroat making quiet rings in the black water of a pool. And no need to thank even. Just be. Just fish. Just walk up the creek, get dark, get cold, it is all a piece. Of me somehow. — Peter Heller

And, of course, the sentences would often be strung together in stories, many of them set in the Hill Country. They were about drunks, and about preachers - there was one about the preacher who at a rural revival meeting was baptizing converts in a creek near Johnson City and became overenthusiastic. One teenage boy was immersed for quite a long time, and when his head was lifted out of the water, one of the congregation called out from the creek bank, "Do you believe?" The boy said, "I believe," and the preacher promptly put his head under again. Again, when he emerged, someone shouted out, "Do you believe?" and again the boy said, gasping this time, "I believe." Down he went again, and this time, when the preacher lifted his head up, someone shouted, "What do you believe?" "I believe this son of a bitch is trying to drown me," the boy said. — Robert A. Caro

Clambering up the Cold Mountain path,
The Cold Mountain trail goes on and on:
The long gorge choked with scree and boulders,
The wide creek, the mist-blurred grass.
The moss is slippery, though there's been no rain
The pine sings, but there's no wind.
Who can leap the world's ties
And sit with me among the white clouds? — Gary Snyder

We sat in silence for a while. I gazed through the window at the night sky, wondering idly at all that space, all that blackness, all that nothing, and as I sat there looking up at the emptiness I began thinking about the creek, the hills, the woods, the water ... how everything goes around and around and never really changes. How life recycles everything it uses. How the end product of one process becomes the starting point of another, how each generation of living things depends on the chemicals released by the generations that have proceeded it ... I don't know why I was thinking about it. It just seemed to occur to me. — Kevin Brooks

Up the well known creek — Margery Allingham

The soles of Cynthia Sawyer's shoes squeaked on the damp flagstone walkway that meandered through Hawthorne Manor's formal gardens. Hazy rays of sun kissed the sprint morning dew, glistening on the early-blooming flowers and foliage soon to blossom into a Southern Living-worthy wonderland. Perfect for tiny Maple Creek, Maryland's annual garden party - the most exciting event of the season, especially for the quirky retirees. Last year, crazy old Mrs. Osworth got lost in the winding boxwood maze and called 911 to get "one of those strong young firemen" to come rescue her. She'd said she felt faint, and claimed she'd need mouth-to-mouth resuscitation the moment they showed up. — Tracy March

Before my eyes daily as we sailed way down upon the Suwannee River were visions of spring furrows at Clouds Creek, the warmed earth opened up behind the plow; of wildflowered meadows, cool and verdant, and airy open woods along the shaded creeks, winding southeast to the Edisto. That spring landscape turned forever and away in my mind's eye, changing softly into gold greens of upland summer in that lost land where I was born, the country of my forefathers, the heart of home. Clouds Creek - my earth - was the wellspring and the source of Edgar Watson, all the Eden he had ever wished or hoped to find. — Peter Matthiessen

There is one thing about Englishmen, they won't fix anything till it's just about totally ruined. You couldn't get the English to fix anything at the start. No! They like to sit and watch it grow worse. Then, when it just looks like the whole thing has gone up Salt Creek, why, the English jump in and rescue it. — Will Rogers

Tybalt put a hand on my back, resting it in the space between my shoulder blades. "Are you all right?"
"Not on this or any other planet." I straightened, up looking around. We were under the old bridge spanning the creek that cut through the middle of campus. I sighed. "See, if I'd just realized where we'd come out, I could have thrown up in the water. Less mess."
"Yes, but won't you think about the frogs? I'm sure they receive enough unwanted vomit from the student body. — Seanan McGuire

God, I was just six years older than you are now. That's terrifying." She raised her shoulder, nudging my head. "Please don't make me a grandmother in six years, okay?"
I scoffed. "Trust me, after the Boy Issues I've had, I'm becoming a nun."
"Well, that's good to know."
We stayed there, dangling our feet over the creek, talking, until the sun was high overhead. By the time we made our way back to the compound, I was feeling a little better. Sure, my life was still intensely screwed up, but at least I had some answers. — Rachel Hawkins

The thought that came to mind was a phrase her Nana had often said when she'd found herself in a bad situation. She was up shit creek without a paddle. — C.C. Hunter

She turns the speedometer off. Running totally black now. Precipitating her way toward the sweet 'crete of the creek bottom like a black angel who has just had the shroud lines of her celestial parachute severed by the Almighty. And when the wheels finally meet the pavement, it just about drives her knees up through her jawbone. She finishes the whole gravitational transaction with not much altitude and a nasty head of dark velocity. — Neal Stephenson

So I put it out of its misery, if it really was miserable, and tried not to think about it. That was another thing they taught us at Willow Creek: don't write their eulogy, don't try to imagine who they used to be, how they came to be here, how they came to be this. I know, who doesn't do that, right? Who doesn't look at one of those things and just naturally start to wonder? It's like reading the last page of a book ... your imagination just naturally spinning. And that's when you get distracted, get sloppy, let your guard down and end up leaving someone else to wonder what happened to you. — Max Brooks

Beyond the harm to local wildlife, any chemicals we used in our garden might end up polluting our well, or run off the property. In a heavy rainstorm, this runoff may end up in nearby Beaver Creek, a tributary to the Brandywine Creek, which runs into the Delaware River, which flows into the Atlantic Ocean. These kinds of direct connections with the outside world exist in every garden, which is why I think we should always aim, in our gardening practices, to do the least harm and the greatest good. — David L. Culp

The water won't clear up until we get the hogs out of the creek. — Jim Hightower

Salome dipped an end of the blue shawl into the creek water, wrung it out, and walked back to Margaret. "Lift up yo' skirt. We — Francine Thomas Howard

Falling in love creates beauty in every facet of life. A hovering bee, a gentle flowing creek, pale blue sky, the crinkle at the corner of an old woman's eye, bare feet on velvet moss, a songbird in a bush, even the howl of a far away wolf become so beautiful to those finding a new love. It was like that for Sassy and Hanlon, everything seemed sharper and clearer. It was like a new view of the world that they had never known existed had opened up to them. Doug Hiser Montana Mist — Doug Hiser

Wind now Sweeping over my Bare Back
I wish I could wrap up the glitter star-green of this moment and hand it to you like an angel gift.
Give you the heat lightning flying in jagged silence over the distant mountains. And the smell of September prairie grass and the even fainter scent of October pine now descending ...
Give you the invisible sage wind whisking past your cheeks. And the cricket quartets and frog symphonies that play near the creek's edge.
To collect these sensations like a scientist of the soul and give them to you in their finest hour of coincidence and destiny. — Carew Papritz

A subterranean murmur. It may sound like one of the many separate voices that make up the sounds of a creek. Or it may come in code, oblique and sneaky, creeping in from around the corner. — Anne Lamott

The creek at night under the moon was just enough like the creek in daylight to be reassuring. There was the deadfall spruce that sieved the current with skeleton branches, churning a line of pale foam. There was the long pool above, a dark mirror of tree shadows and beacon moon. There were the gravel bars, chalky, shaped to the banks and swept into low moraines that divided the water. There the sky, softened as if by a thin fog of moonlight, filling the canyon. For a moment I forgot my preoccupation with the dark and drove up the road with that awe I felt before certain paintings in certain museums, the awe in which I disappeared. — Peter Heller

But I'm not just shocked. I'm also disappointed in May for allowing Z.G. to talk her into this. I'm angry at him for preying on her vulnerability. And I'm heartsick that May and I have to take it. This is how women end up on the street selling their bodies. But then this is how it is for women everywhere. You experience one lapse in conscience, in how low you think you'll go, in what you'll accept, and pretty soon you're at the bottom. You've become a girl with three holes, the lowest form of prostitute, living on one of the floating brothels in Soochow Creek, catering to Chinese so poor they don't mind catching a loathsome disease in exchange for a few humping moments of the husband-wife thing. — Lisa See

I grew up watching 'Dawson's Creek,' and I started watching 'The Vampire Diaries' when I was auditioning because I wanted to get a feel of it ... then I totally got hooked! — Phoebe Tonkin

The Sun Going South
In late sunshine I wander troubled.
Restless I wander in autumn sunlight.
Too many changes, partings, and deaths.
Doors have closed that were always open.
Trees that held the sky up are cut down.
So much that I alone remember!
This creek runs dry among its stones.
Souls of the dead, come drink this water!
Come into this side valley with me,
a restless old woman, unseemly,
troubled, walking on dry grass, dry stones. — Ursula K. Le Guin

His hands grasped her waist and lifted her until she could have sworn that his feet had come off the ground, too; that they were floating up above the creek, above the trees, above the burning hillside, into the dense tangle of stars, about to kiss the moon. — Lauren Kate

I mean, the power of water to lift cars is amazing. A creek backed up near a railroad track. And an entire train was lifted off of the railroad track and dumped over. People just need to make sure they do not drive into water. It floats the cars, and then we have deaths because of it. — Jay Nixon

He carried her over the Owl Creek mountain range without stopping," he said, quietly this time. "He carried her until he reached one of the hot springs around what became Chapin, and then he walked into the water with her and held her there for three days. He had about given up when she opened her eyes and whispered his name. — Laura Anderson Kurk

The thing that bothers me the most is the recklessness and greed of the local ranchers, who run too many cattle back here, choking with waste the creek that runs through my property. There's certain times of day that the cowboys like to send them turds down the river. Them f**kers piss me off. if you gotta mess up the ecology of the world in order to raise a bunch of cows, well eat somethin else. I'm not a fan of the cowboys. — Merle Haggard

And then there's the truth beyond that, sitting like an old rock under green creek water: none of these things matter. Right now, in this moment, we have love. We have it in the sound of my daughter's laugher, in Mom's and Georgia's locked fingers, in the warm pressure of J.T.'s hand. It will leave, and it will come again, and when it does I'll give up everything and take it. Just like an addict. Like dry grass in new rain. It's not something I'm proud of necessarily. Then again, maybe I am. — Katie Crouch

For a guy with only one peeper," Olsen commented, "you're doing okay." Morosely, he added: "But you'd sure be up shit creek if you lost the other. — Philip K. Dick

We were now well and truly up the creek, and paddles were in short supply. — Stephen Boyle

If the U.S. succeeds in destroying the revolution, my status will be like that of most Cubans: I'll be up a creek without a paddle. It will be devastating for people worldwide who believe in justice. — Assata Shakur

The great wall of vegetation, an exuberant and entangled mass of trunks, branches, leaves, boughs, festoons, motionless in the moonlight, was like a rioting invasion of soundless life, a rolling wave of plants, piled up, crested, ready to topple over the creek, to sweep every little man of us out of his little existence. And it moved not. A deadened burst of mighty splashes and snorts reached us from afar, as though an ichthyosaurus had been taking a bath of glitter in the great river. — Joseph Conrad

What I can play is blues. She was never that into blues. I can salve with Lightning and Cotton, BB and Clapton and Stevie Ray. I can blast Son Seals singing Dear Son until the coyotes in the creek raise up a sympathetic sky ripping interpretation of the harmonica solo. Piercing howls and yelps. Sounds like it's killing them and also like they love it. Which when you get right down to it is the blues. — Peter Heller

One night a flock of red-tailed black cockatoos break the quiet as they charge up from the creek, right over the homestead, then down the hill towards Clem's house.
'They're my favourite, you know, of all the birds, they're the best,' comes Tom's raspy whisper.
'I know Dad,' says Clem. 'You always say.'
'They're majestic, dramatic. You wouldn't argue with one. — Nicole Sinclair

You can't get the water to clear up until you get the pigs out of the creek. One — Gordon L. Rottman

When I received the Culver Creek Handbook over the summer and noticed happily that the "Dress
Code" section contained only two words, casual modesty, it never occurred to me that girls would
show up for class half asleep in cotton pajama shorts, T-shirts, and flip-flops. Modest, I guess, and
casual. — John Green

When he sat in the rowboat again, the oars ready but not yet dipped into the water to take him away from the island, Jeff looked back. He didn't see the busy land crabs nor the overgrown interior; he saw the beach, knowing it was there just beyond sight, keeping the sight of it clear in his inner eye. He splashed the oars into the water. Behind him, a great blue squawked - Jeff turned his head quickly. The heron rose up from the marsh grass, croaking its displeasure at the disturbance, at Jeff, at all of the world. Its legs dragged briefly in the water before it rose free to swoop over Jeff's head with a whirring of powerful wings. It landed again on the far side of the ruined dock, to stand on stiltlike legs with its long beak pointed toward the water. Just leave me alone, the heron seemed to be saying. Jeff rowed away, down the quiet creek. The bird did not watch him go. — Cynthia Voigt

I didn't grow up playing video games. I grew up catching crawdads in the creek and minnows and lizards and snakes. — Blake Shelton

He had to keep tearing his gaze from her chest, because this was so not the time to be caught up in lust. This was shit creek, and they were without paddles. — Bethany K. Lovell

I recycle and try to be nice to the earth. But flora and fauna have always interested me, and it is because of so many years of summer camp and growing up in DC with Rock Creek Park fairly near me, or Glover Park; I lived in Glover Park for a while and that park was in my backyard. — Henry Rollins

Chess and you taking a picture of me reading Slaughterhouse-Five, telling me I'd need proof someday because nobody in Creek View would ever believe I had actually read a goddamn book, let alone five. Talking about God and why there's evil in the world and bitching because the Steelers won the Super Bowl. Camp Leatherneck, me not missing home at all and you missing it like crazy, always talking about going to college and how when you had leave you were gonna marry Hannah. And you wanted kids, and I said I didn't because people like me, we just end up disappointing one another and I'd probably be like my dad, and you told me I had to get over it, get over my dad and my mom and how screwed up everything is because you said, Josh, you're gonna have it all. I know it. You're gonna have it all. And for the first time, I'm almost believing that. — Heather Demetrios

There is a fundamental reason why we look at the sky with wonder and longing - for the same reason that we stand, hour after hour, gazing at the distant swell of the open ocean. There is something like an ancient wisdom, encoded and tucked away in our DNA, that knows its point of origin as surely as a salmonid knows its creek. Intellectually, we may not want to return there, but the genes know, and long for their origins - their home in the salty depths. But if the seas are our immediate source, the penultimate source is certainly the heavens.
The spectacular truth is - and this is something that your DNA has known all along - the very atoms of your body - the iron, calcium, phosphorus, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and on and on - were initially forged in long-dead stars. This is why, when you stand outside under a moonless, country sky, you feel some ineffable tugging at your innards. We are star stuff. Keep looking up. — Gerald D. Waxman