Clothesline Quotes & Sayings

The ability to kill someone is basically a mental stance, and not a question of physical means; a serial killer armed with a couple of feet of clothesline is far more dangerous than a cheerleader with a bazooka. — Neal Stephenson

When afternoon came to Vidyasagar Road, wet clothes ... hung from a clothesline which stretched from one side to another on the veranda of the first floor. The line, which had not been tightly drawn anyway, sagged with the pressure of the heavy wet clothes that dripped, from sleeves and trouser-ends, a curious grey water on to the floor, and, especially in the middle, one noticed the line curved downwards, as if a smile were forming. — Amit Chaudhuri

It was the cause of many of Dad's outrages too, when people elected themselves his personal oracle of Delphi ... They'd made the mistake of abridging Dad, putting Dad in a nutshell, telling Dad How It Was (and getting it all wrong).
...
"The act of being personally misconstrued," Dad said, "informed to one's face one is no more complex than a few words haphazardly strung together like blotchy undershirts on a clothesline
well, it can fall the most self-possessed of individuals. — Marisha Pessl

Good fences make good neighbors, and these were apparently good enough that they had not felt the need for razor wire at the top. I crested the fence, threw myself into the yard beyond, fell, rolled to my feet, and ran with the expectation of being garroted by a taut clothesline.
I heard panting, looked down, and saw a gold retriever running at my side, ears flapping. The dog glanced up at me tongue rolling, grinning, as though jazzed by the prospect of an unscheduled play session. — Dean Koontz

Most reformers, like a pair of trousers on a windy clothesline, go through a vast deal of vehement motion, but stay in the same place. — Austin O'Malley

Forgiveness lives alone and far off down the road, but bitterness and art are close, gossipy neighbors, sharing the same clothesline, hanging out their things, getting their laundry confused. — Lorrie Moore

It's not hard to tell we was poor - when you saw the toilet paper dryin' on the clothesline. — George Lindsey

Canada is not so much a country as a clothesline nearly 4,000 miles long. St John's in Newfoundland is closer to Milan, Italy than to Vancouver. — Simon Hoggart

Death stretches out like a clothesline, and then suddenly blows:
blows a dark sound that swells the sheets
and beds are sailing into a harbor
where death is waiting, dressed as an admiral — Pablo Neruda

At the end of the day the only thing that stays are your words. They linger while you disappear. Hanging in the air like they're on a clothesline, oh how I wish I could let them go. — Jasmine Sandozz

She was the only doctor's wife in Branford, Maine, who hung her wash on an outdoor clothesline instead of putting it through a dryer, because she liked to look out the window and see the clothes blowing in the wind. She had been especially delighted, one day, when one sleeve of the top of her husband's pajamas, prodded by the stiff breeze off the bay, reached over and grabbed her nightgown around the waist. — Lois Lowry

I see these guys, they throw a guy into the ropes and they do a back flip and then clothesline the guy and it looks stupid. Why don't you just clothesline the guy? — Owen Hart

We were again, as we'd been before, small fledgling birds sitting on a clothesline waiting for a strong gust of wind to blow us asunder. — V.C. Andrews

In Hawaii, family showed itself in the way that my siblings never dared to call one another "half" anything. We were fully brothers and sisters. Family appeared in the pile of rubber slippers and sandals that crowded the entrance to everyone's home; in the kisses we gave when we greeted one another and said good-bye; in the graceful choreography of Grandma hanging the laundry on the clothesline; in the inclusiveness of calling anyone older auntie or uncle whether or not they were relatives. — Janet Mock

If an expectant mother stepped over a rope on the ground or under a clothesline, the umbilical cord would tangle during childbirth. Mothers-to-be should — Diane Ackerman

You might be a redneck if your daughter's Barbie's Dream House has a clothesline in the front yard. — Jeff Foxworthy

My happiest childhood memories are of times in our backyard. My mother had an old clothesline that hung out in front. It seemed like it stretched a mile long, and I loved sitting in the sun while she hung clothes. — Traci Lords

South African schoolchildren set a world record this week by creating the world's longest clothesline. Hey, what do South Africans wash their clothes with? Apar-Tide! — Dennis Miller

Some of the apparitions that emerged from the shadows of doorways and alleys were incomplete, manifesting in full only as they reached the light of the kiosk. An empty dress floated through the night air as if it had become detached from a clothesline by some persistent breeze. As it drifted slowly toward the subway, translucent hands and ankles became visible. A bicycle rolled across the courtyard, chain squeaking softly, a pair of black slacks taking form as it entered the glow of the kiosk lamps. — C.D. Sweitzer

But this was no ordinary clothesline. It had been strung right through the trees, on up to the porch of Frost's cabin--and at the top end was tied a bell. When someone down below tugged hard, the bell rang right outside the cabin. This was a signal to Frost that it would be worth his while to walk on down the hill. But as Frost got well into his seventies, he sometimes did not hear the bell. Gillie did, though. At its ting-a-ling, the dog would stretch and get to his feet, then go and find his master. Gillie would tug gently at the toe of Frost's sneaker. When Frost got the dog's signal, he would start down to the white farmhouse. — Doris Faber

This empty act could no more be mistaken for a mother's touch than the wind that fills out some dress on a clothesline might be confused with an actual body. — Darin Strauss

A generating function is a clothesline on which we hang up a sequence of numbers for display. — Herbert Wilf

Have you ever noticed how as an adult, all the bright colors go out of your life? Now that I'm not a kid anymore, things always look gray, like a clothesline draped with laundry that's been washed too many times and left to stand in the wind. I guess that's what growing up is ... it's a fading photograph. — Rebecca McNutt

He saw an idiot in a yard in a leather harness chained to a clothesline and it leaned and swayed drooling and looked out upon the alley with eyes that fed the most rudimentary brain and yet seemed possessed of news in the universe denied right forms, like perhaps the eyes of squid whose simian depths seem to harbor some horrible intelligence. All down past the hedges a gibbering and howling in a hoarse frog's voice, word perhaps of things known raw, unshaped by the constructions of a mind obsessed with form. — Cormac McCarthy

I see myself as a very successful entrepreneur. Maybe making films or else starting my own clothesline. I see myself as a corporate woman, sitting on the 16th floor of a swank office with a glass window that overlooks the Manhattan skyline. — Sushmita Sen

If you think in terms of teaching as a shared journey of discovery, instead of just a job, look what's involved: sharing of knowledge, hunger for understanding, desire for approval, opening of another spirit, penetration of one mind into another, the mystery of the unknown, the pleasure of success, mental intimacy in shared moments of revelation, maybe even climactic moments... Internal changes, growth, expansion, opening, tapping into unconscious longings-well, most of those words describe an erotic relationship. If you hung them all on a clothesline and picked only three, you'd have enough to produce a spark, a thin column of smoke, maybe even a small flame. — Jacquie Gordon

I don't want to know about the constitution of the rapist
I want to kill him! I don't care if he is white or black, if he is middle-class or poor, if his mother hung him from the clothesline by his balls: I only want to kill him! Any woman who has been raped will agree. — Diamanda Galas

GRAY-EYED COLE SAT in his bedroom window, looking out over the road, a scoped Ruger 10/22 in his hands. Squirrel rifle. Below him, a quilt hung on the wire clothesline, airing out. Before the end of the day, the quilt would smell like early-summer fields, with a little gravel dust mixed in. A wonderful smell, a smell like home. — John Sandford

If we all used clotheslines, we could save 30 million tons of coal a year, or shut down 15 nuclear power plants. And you don't have to wait to start. Yours could be up by this afternoon. To be specific, buy 50 feet of clothesline and a $3 bag of clothespins and become a solar energy pioneer. — Bill McKibben