Quotes & Sayings About Front Yard

On Calvert Street, the row houses stood in two endless lines. "I don't see how you know which one was home," Luke had told him once, and Cody had been amazed. Oh, if you lived here you knew. They weren't alike at all, not really. One had dozens of roses struggling in its tiny front yard, another an illuminated Madonna glowing night and day in the parlor window. Some had their trim painted in astonishing colors, assertively, like people with their chins thrust out. The fact that they were attached didn't mean a thing. — Anne Tyler

The Rev's house is similar to Fiji's, but it's older, smaller, and has only sparse grass in the little front yard. It is also in no way welcoming or charming, and he has no cat. — Charlaine Harris

Dad played with me a great deal, as dads should do, and our chief sport was baseball. He bought me a hardball when I was three years old, and he used to sit in a rocker on the front porch while I sat on the grass in the yard, and we'd play catch by the hour. — Mordecai Brown

Working on the native-herb garden in the front corner of the yard. Already thriving: thyme, hyssop, spearmint, lemon balm, fennel, chamomile, marjoram. Must add: lavender, ambrosia, valerian, mugwort, pennyroyal, gillyflower, and (when it's warmer) sweet basil. — Neal Stephenson

The stars which shone over Babylon and the stable in Bethlehem still shine as brightly over the Empire State Building and your front yard today. — Linda Goodman

I wanted a house near my family in a quiet neighborhood with a front yard and a backyard that my dog will like. — Kylie Jenner

Wideacre faces due south and the sun shines all day on the yellow stone until it is warm and powdery to the touch. The sun travels from gable end to gable end so the front of the house is never in shadow. When I was a small child collecting petals in the rose garden, or loitering at the back of the house in the stable yard, it seemed that Wideacre was the very centre of the world with the sun defining our boundaries in the east at dawn, until it sank over our hills in the west, in the red and pink evening. — Philippa Gregory

But first, the news: The House of Commons was sealed off today after police chased an escaped lunatic through the front door during Prime Minister's question time. A spokesman at Scotland Yard said it was like looking for a needle in a haystack. — Ronnie Barker

Global warming is the foreboding thunder in the distance. Ocean acidification is the lightning strike in our front yard, right here, right now. — David Horsey

Still grows the vivacious lilac a generation after the door and lintel and the sill are gone, unfolding its sweet-scented flowers each spring, to be plucked by the musing traveller; planted and tended once by children's hands, in front-yard plots - now standing by wallsides in retired pastures, and giving place to new-rising forests; - the last of that stirp, sole survivor of that family. Little did the dusky children think that the puny slip with its two eyes only, which they stuck in the ground in the shadow of the house and daily watered, would root itself so, and outlive them, and house itself in the rear that shaded it, and grown man's garden and orchard, and tell their story faintly to the lone wanderer a half-century after they had grown up and died - blossoming as fair, and smelling as sweet, as in that first spring. I mark its still tender, civil, cheerful lilac colors. — Henry David Thoreau

I'd like to go out in the front yard and shout something. "None of this is worth it!" That's what I'd like people to hear. — Raymond Carver

Kingbitter, as he did frequently nowadays, was standing at his window and looking out onto the street below. This street offered the most mundane and ordinary sights of Budapest's mundane and ordinary streets. The muck-, oil-, and dog-dirt-spattered sidewalk was lined with parked cars, and in the one-yard gaps between the cars and the leprotically peeling house walls the most mundane and ordinary passersby were attempting to go about their business, their hostile features an outward clue to their dark thoughts. Every now and then, perhaps in a hurry to overtake the single file inching along the front, one of them would step off the sidewalk, only for an entire chorus of rancorous car horns to give the lie to any groundless hope of breaking free from the line. — Imre Kertesz

loping, comfortable gait pulled my eyes and held them. I turned and dashed into the flat. I could see the front yard — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

I enjoy reading books like that because it's not at all the life I lead. It's completely different than any situation I'll ever be in, thank God. But I get entertainment out of it. Because as much as I like to read about a guy telling a girl she's so, so wet for him ... if anyone ever said that to me during sex, I wouldn't be turned on by it. I would be terrified I accidentally peed on myself.'
Ben laughs.
'And if you and I were having sex and you told me you owned me, I would literally crawl out from under you, put on my clothes, walk out of your house, and go puke in your front yard. — Colleen Hoover

Charis sipped, smiling back. " ... I saw God everywhere."
Grif narrowed his eyes. "Really?"
She nodded and leaned close. "We were actually pen pals. I'd write Him letters in Latin and leave them in my closet."
"Why the closet?"
She shrugged. "Because He didn't appear after I set my front yard's bushes on fire, so I decided He was shy. — Vicki Pettersson

A ghetto has tall buildings and empty lots, trash all over the street and city noise. Here the houses are two stories; the houses have trees in front and everyone has a yard. I always told Tracy she was wrong, but now I think Tracy was right. The ghetto looks different in different places, but if you live there, it makes you feel the same. — Heidi W. Durrow

I arrived at my hut in Beverly Hills just in time to keep real estate men from plotting off and selling my front yard. They will sell you anything or anybody's in the world as long as they can get a first payment ... It used to be only Iowa that was out here but now they have three or four adjoining states interested and they are here, too. Real estate agents - you never saw as many in your life; they are as thick as bootleggers. — Will Rogers

That cat doesn't have a lick of sense,' I said, sighing.
Well, honey, he's not right in the head,' Dad said, flipping his cigarette into the front yard.
I glared at him. 'And just what do you mean by that?'
Dad counted on his fingers. 'He's cross-eyed; he jumps out of trees after birds and then doesn't land on his feet; he sleeps with his head smashed up against the wall, and the tip of his tail is crooked.'
Oh yeah? Well, how about this: he once got locked in a basement by evil Petey Scroggs in the middle of January and survived on snow and little frozen mice. When I'm cold at night he sleeps right on my face. Of that whole litter of kittens he came out of he's the only one left. One of his brothers didn't even have a butthole.'
I stand corrected. PeeDink is a survivor. — Haven Kimmel

Any idea why there is a giant penis made out of snow in our front yard?"
Instead of an answer, I was rewarded with a face full of graham cracker cereal and milk." - from Of Cheerleaders and Gingers — K.C. Beaumont

The scent of Havana tobacco draped thick from the magnolia trees in the front yard. Ice cubes mingled and clinked against the sides of crystal tumblers. Patrick said hello to a group of men sitting on the veranda. I heard the pop of a champagne cork and laughter from inside. — Ruta Sepetys

It is wrong to draw a sharp line in one's imagination between the "nature" present on the Rocky Mountain front and that available in the suburbanite's own front yard. The natural world found on even the most perfect and stylized of lawns is no less real than that at the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Different, yes, but to draw too sharp a distinction between the sparsely settled world of Alaska and the dense suburbs of Levittown is a prescription for the plundering of natural resources. It is easy to see how the yard, conceived as less natural and thus less important than the spotted owl, is easily ignored. The point is underscored by research showing that, surprisingly, people who evince concern for the environment are more likely to use chemicals on their yards than those who are less ecologically aware. — Ted Steinberg

I can't say a thing. What is there to say? I have given birth to a son! What more can I possibly hope for? I hear his footsteps crossing the front yard and gradually fading away, off into the distance. As the silence grows, I suddenly realize that hes gone. He's gone to someplace far away, and he's never coming back.(2007: 153) — Hwang Sok-yong

I was the kid who always liked to take the ball down to the school even in my free time, kick it against the wall, juggle it in the front yard and so it was kind of a perpetual state of playing soccer for me. — Brandi Chastain

I don't want to be throwing the football on the front yard when I'm 75. I mean, I'm not opposed to men doing that. But I don't think it's gonna work for me. — Alec Baldwin

I have a license," says a voice behind us. I turn to find 17C scrolling through pictures on his camera, standing in the front yard like a deep-rooted tree, like he's been there for years. Somehow, that black eye only makes him more desirable. "And you are . . . ?" asks Moses. A) Perfect B) The god of Devastating Attractiveness C) A flawless specimen, created in a lab by mad scientists in an effort to toy with the heart of Mary Iris Malone D) All of the above I circle D. Final effing answer. — David Arnold

Buy whatever kids are selling on card tables in their front yard. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

In former days Bob Arctor had run his affairs differently: there had been a wife much like other wives, two small daughters, a stable household that got swept and cleaned and emptied out daily, the dead newspapers not even opened carried from the front walk to the garbage pail, on even, sometimes, read. But then one day, while lifting out an electric corn popper from under the sink, Arctor had hit his head on the corner of a kitchen cabinet directly above him. The pain, the cut in his scalp, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. It lashed on him instantly that he didn't hate the kitchen cabinet: he hated his wife, his two daughters, his whole house, the back yard with its power mower, the garage, the radiant heating system, the front yard, the fence, the whole fucking place and everyone in it. He wanted a divorce; he wanted to split. And so he had, very soon. And entered, by degrees, a new and somber life, lacking all of that. — Philip K. Dick

I passed out in our front yard. But honey, don't turn out the light, cause I think I'm in the mood for love tonight. — Robert Earl Keen

Rhys - if that was even his real name - either believed what he was saying or he was a prime candidate for an Oscar. Because try as Morgan might, she couldn't see any evidence that he was lying. He had to be crazy then, but everything about the whole situation was insane. After all, she was standing in her front yard in her pajamas, holding a naked man at the point of a garden hoe. She'd taken assertive action when she'd seen him lying in the grass, assuming he was drunk or something. Well, she'd gotten the upper hand all right. Now what was she supposed to do with the guy? — Dani Harper

Welcome to the estrogen vortex, dude, where mindfucks are the norm and understanding them is as common as a fucking unicorn in your front yard. — K. Bromberg

The print was an old one made from a negative taken in the 1960's of her parents in Sydney Mines, dancing with thrilled, excited expressions on their faces, in front of a classic car that had been a wedding gift at the time. Her mother's hair, red back then, was held back by a blue handkerchief, and she was dressed in a billowing skirt and white blouse. Her father's denim jeans and faded t-shirt were streaked with coal dust as he held her hands and spun her around in the front yard of their old clapboard house, yellow grass under their feet and a cobalt-blue sky with white clouds drifting above. Mandy could almost feel the late summer breeze as she gazed deeply into the print, watching the flamboyant colors come to life. She hung it up to dry on two wooden clothespins hanging from a string above her. — Rebecca McNutt

Why are you stripping in my front yard at six in the morning? I have neighbors you know. — Nathalie Saade

Taking the long view, we need to teach our kids street smarts, like the importance of walking with a friend instead of alone, and how to discern bad strangers from the overwhelming majority of good ones. If we prevent our children from learning how to navigate the world beyond our front yard, it will only come back to haunt them later on when they feel frightened, bewildered, lost, or confused out on the streets. — Julie Lythcott-Haims

I grew up in a house that might have had the only front-yard cornfield in all of Los Angeles. — Paul Fleischman

Even if you have nothing in your wallet, nothing can keep you from having a great summer. You can listen to crickets sing you to sleep, trace the Big Dipper, breathe in the stars, run through a sprinkler, host a cartwheel contest in the front yard. — Regina Brett

THE TINY SPIDERS that lived in the higher branches of the downed tree (which now meant the branches that lay on the other side of the crushed fence that separated front yard from back) were bright red. At the end of the day, even the careful children had the marks of them, bloody starbursts on their palms. And the smell of the green wood, the tender leaves — Alice McDermott

Oh, boy! A bone! I love bones. I take it over to gnaw on in front of the cube door. This is the best place to see the entire yard. — Lea Kirk

If you let a bully come in your front yard, he'll be on your porch the next day and the day after that he'll rape your wife in your own bed. — Lyndon B. Johnson

Central Park is the grandiose symbol of the front yard each child in New York hasn't got. — Robert Benchley

If I seem to be over-interested in junk, it is because I am, and I have a lot of it, too - half a garage full of bits and broken pieces. I use these things for repairing other things. Recently I stopped my car in front of the display yard of a junk dealer near Sag Harbor. As I was looking courteously at the stock, it suddenly occurred to me that I had more than he had. But it can be seen that I do have a genuine and almost miserly interest in worthless objects. My excuse is that in this era of planned obsolescence, when a thing breaks down I can usually find something in my collection to repair it - a toilet, or a motor, or a lawn mower. But I guess the truth is that I simply like junk. — John Steinbeck

The dugout in the weeds or leaves beneath a backyard willow, the rivulet of a seasonal creek, even the ditch between the front yard and the road-all of these places are entire universes to a young child. — Richard Louv

Pines and spruces can't be sheared like yew or hemlock, but they are stately in large landscapes, where their eventual size is a plus. (But they are a nightmare in small yards, where their eventual size is like having a brontosaurus nesting in the front yard.) — Cassandra Danz

he set up painted foam and resin headstones in the front yard, with names like Hugh R. Next, Ima Goner, Myra Mains, and Ted N. Buried. — Jessica Freeburg

I need to live like the trees in my front yard: accepting, selfless, bending and grounded. — Michelle Colston

They both fought to catch their breath, though Megan's oxygen deprivation had nothing to do with the game.
"You okay?" Finn asked.
"Yeah, you?" she replied. Every inch of her body was throbbing to touch him again.
"Yeah," he replied with a huge grin. He pushed himself around and got on all fours in front of her, pausing there with his face inches from hers. "I'm glad you stayed," he whispered, his breath warm on her face.
Megan somehow managed to reply. "Me too."
Then Finn pushed himself up and headed back toward the centre of the yard. For a moment, Megan couldn't move. Then Doug walked over and offered his arm. Megan grasped it thankfully and he yanked up to her shaky legs.
"Who's all in a twist now?" he asked with a smirk.
Megan laughed and shoved him from behind as they headed back to the line. — Kate Brian

Since when do we let the government decide what is or isnt good for us? What the hell does Congress know about nutrition, anyway? ... If the government can use force whenever something is "in our best interest" then government should force everyone to wake up at 6am every morning for calisthenics in the front yard. Fast food establishments should be torn down and replaced with bars that serve carrot juice and alfalfa sprouts, since - "its in your best interest." This paternalistic attitude that "the government knows best" and that you are merely a helpless child is insulting and reprehensible. — Michael Badnarik

In the front yard lives the oldest thing around, a white oak
That I used to say is my love for the world,
That I now would just call love as it is.
Belonging to nobody, no metaphor, the very. — Coleman Barks

If man can't piss in his own front yard, then he's living too close to town! — Tom Russell

A truck turned the corner and rumbled its way over to our house. I watched it parallel park, then go silent as the lights switched off. The driver's side door opened, and my best friend, Matthew, stepped down. His cowboy boots thudded against the asphalt, then crunched across the gravel that covered our front yard. "Howdy," he said. I — E.M. Tippetts

I've got a statue of St. Francis in my front yard, and I'm not even a practicing Catholic. — Michael Keaton

As the van door starts to close, Brad suddenly realizes that the instant the doors close completely, the van interior will become the terrifying bland gray space he's heard about all his life, the place one goes when one has been Written Out.
The van interior becomes the bland gray space.
From the front yard TV comes the brash martial music that indicates UrgentUpdateNewsMinute.
Animal rights activists have expressed concern over the recent trend of spraying live Canadian geese with a styrene coating which instantaneously kills them while leaving them extremely malleable, so it then becomes easy to shape them into comical positions and write funny sayings in DryErase cartoon balloons emanating from their beaks, which, apparently, is the new trend for outdoor summer parties.
— George Saunders

It was a great place to grow up. There were always kids around in our neighborhood. We had a basketball hoop in the back of our house, a little front yard where you could get touch football games going. I know you think of it as a big city, but it was fun for me to grow up in New Orleans. I remember it as a very normal childhood. — Eli Manning

I was tired of well-meaning folks, telling me it was time I got over being heartbroke. When somebody tells you that, a little bell ought to ding in your mind. Some people don't know grief from garlic grits. There's somethings a body ain't meant to get over. No I'm not suggesting you wallow in sorrow, or let it drag on; no I am just saying it never really goes away. (A death in the family) is like having a pile of rocks dumped in your front yard. Every day you walk out and see them rocks. They're sharp and ugly and heavy. You just learn to live around them the best way you can. Some people plant moss or ivy; some leave it be. Some folks take the rocks one by one, and build a wall. — Michael Lee West

You may be a redneck if ... you think you are an entrepreneur because of the "Dirt for Sale" sign in the front yard. — Jeff Foxworthy

But what if your kid runs into the street in front of a car? Don't you have to use Method I? ... If a child develops a habit of running into the street, a parent might first try to talk to the child about the dangers of cars, walk her around the edge of the yard, and tell her that anything beyond is not safe, show her a picture of a child hit by a car, build a fence around the yard, or watch her when she is playing in the front yard for a couple of days, reminding her each time she goes beyond the limits. Even if I took the punishment approach, I would never risk my child's life on the assumption that punishment alone would keep her from going into the street. I would want to employ more certain methods in any event. — Thomas Gordon

The church in the book (and movie) plays a pivotal scene. We looked everywhere .. I mean everywhere! We had to have enough of a front yard area to house a Nativity scenes. And we finally found it .. two miles from our office. And we had been all over Tulsa looking. We were looking in places in Texas, everywhere! And I was in the car with the director and we drove by the church. — Luka Magnotta

Sometimes I know what my characters are moving away from or toward; more often I just wait and see. For instance, though I knew Sinkler in 'The Trusty' was going for water, I did not know that he would meet a fetching young farm wife until I got him into her front yard. — Ron Rash

Normally Halloween was like Christmas for me. I would anticipate it for weeks, decorating myself and the house, as well as strolling around the neighborhood, admiring everyone else's decorations. Nothing lifts my spirit like a scarecrow in the front yard. — Damien Echols

So along with that is spending a lot of time with the ball. For me it was, I loved to juggle the ball in my front yard, and I always challenged myself - how many juggles can I get today? I think for players to get better, it's just about spending the time. — Brandi Chastain

But then one day, while lifting out an electric corn popper from under the sink, Arctor had hit his head on the corner of a kitchen cabinet directly above him. The pain, the cut in his scalp, so unexpected and undeserved, had for some reason cleared away the cobwebs. It flashed on him instantly that he didn't hate the kitchen cabinet: he hated his wife, his two daughters, his whole house, the back yard with its power mower, the garage, the radiant heating system, the front yard, the fence, the whole fucking place and everyone in it. He wanted a divorce; he wanted to split. And so he had, very soon. And entered, by degrees, a new and somber life lacking all of that.
Probably he should have regretted his decision. He had not. — Philip K. Dick

The Pension Dressler stood in a side street and had, at first glance, the air rather of a farm than of a hotel. Frau Dressler's pig, tethered by one hind trotter to the jamb of the front door, roamed the yard and disputed the kitchen scraps with the poultry. He was a prodigious beast. Frau Dressler's guests prodded him appreciatively on the way to the dining-room, speculating on how soon he would be ripe for killing. The milch-goat was allowed a narrower radius; those who kept strictly to the causeway were safe, but she never reconciled herself to this limitation and, day in, day out, essayed a series of meteoric onslaughts on the passers-by, ending, at the end of her rope, with a jerk which would have been death to an animal of any other species. One day the rope would break; she knew it, and so did Frau Dressler's guests. — Evelyn Waugh

All those adorable towheaded kids in the promotional film are going to turn thirteen. Once a family member hits puberty, odds are that everybody is not going to have the same ideals. Unless everybody gets together and agrees that the new ideals involve turning the front yard into a skate ramp and officially changing Dad's name to Fuckhead. — Sarah Vowell

The blazing sun beat down on the concrete of the museum's front yard- Reverend Ryu Yosop felt as if the heat were sucking up all the moisture in his brain and heart. What different colors he and his brother Yohan must have used as each of them painted their own picture of home, of the carnage. These people have constructed yet a different vision of their own, Yosop thought to himself, but it all stems from the same nightmare, the one we created together. — Hwang Sok-yong

He cupped her face and forced her to see him. She had to see past her fear. Her eyes met his and he knew they were together. "Watch me. Don't look at them or anything else. Watch me until I motion for you, then run for the car as fast as you can." Once more, he did not hesitate. He jerked open the door, set up fast on the man in the drive, and fired the Colt twice. He reset on the man coming across the yard. Pike doubled on each man's center of mass so quickly the four shots sounded like two - baboomba-boom - then he ran to the center of the front yard. He saw no more men, so he waved out the girl. "Go. — Robert Crais

By the time I was twelve, I had started my own theater company and was doing plays in the backyard and the front yard and all over the neighborhood, so, you know, I was definitely a lifer even back when I was 10. — Carrie Preston

You might be a redneck if you have flowers planted in a bathroom appliance in your front yard. — Jeff Foxworthy

Probably when we were fishing, but I got serious about it yesterday when we were swapping spit in your momma's front yard and I didn't care who was watching." He sat up and took her hand in his. "I wanted people to watch. I wanted people to see us together. I wanted people to see us kissing today. I want everyone to know that you're mine. — Rachel Gibson

Jason and his parents lived directly across the street. He was outside that day trying to get some mail-order rocket to soar into the heavens. What a rip-off! The whole time I was watching him, the stupid thing never made it a yard off the ground. It was after about the hundredth try, when the movers had half the truck unloaded, that I noticed his ass rolling his beady eyes at me. I was using a piece of pink chalk to draw a makeshift hopscotch diagram on the street in front of my house when he approached me. His Kangol hat and leather bomber jacket made him look like a pint-size pimp. All he needed was a couple of gold teeth. — Zane

Shoot you on the front porch and knock you to the back yard. — Lil' Wayne

A hip-looking teen watches an elderly woman hobble across the street on a walker.
"Grammy's here!" he shouts.
He puts some MacAttack Mac&Cheese in the microwave and dons headphones and takes out a video game so he won't be bored during the forty seconds it takes his lunch to cook. A truck comes around the corner and hits Grammy, sending her flying over the roof into the backyard, where luckily she lands on a trampoline. Unluckily, she bounces back over the roof, into the front yard, landing on a rosebush. — George Saunders

My favorite football memory isn't beating Florida or winning the bowl game ... My favorite memories are of playing football with my brothers and my dad in the front yard when I was younger. — Eli Manning

Guess what?" she said to us. "Someone chopped down a tree in Mrs. Spencer's garden last night."

I stared at her incredulously for a moment. Not a much-loved family member, then, not a nuclear power plant. My eyes went to Florence's face, which was wet with tears. Was she really crying over Mr. Snuggles?

Unobtrusively, I slipped past Lottie and over to the coffee machine, put the biggest cup I could find under it, and pressed the cappuccino button. Twice.

"A tree? But why?" asked Mia with a perfectly judged mixture of curiosity and mild surprise.

"No one knows," said Lottie. "But Mrs. Spencer has already called in Scotland Yard. It was a very valuable tree."

I almost laughed out loud. Yes, sure. I bet they had a special gardening squad to investigate such cases. Scotland Front Yard. Good day, my name is Inspector Griffin and I'm looking into the murder of Mr. Snuggles. — Kerstin Gier

Codi: Gives you the willies, doesn't it? The thought of raising kids in a place where the front yard ends in a two-hundred-foot drop? [referring to cliff dwellings] Loyd: No worse than raising up kids where the front yard ends in a freeway. — Barbara Kingsolver

the city is cold and hard like that bike I stole from your front yard. — Le

To join Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys was like throwing a baseball around in your front yard and somebody coming over and signing you to play for the New York Yankees. — Johnny Gimble

Like your sweet, affectionate house cat, Alice Dahl is easy to underestimate. It's not until the songbirds in the yard show up eviscerated on the front porch that you realize you should've kept that bell collar on her - because those poor birds never even saw her coming. — Elle Lothlorien

A miniature dancing bear that had to go potty. Scooping him up, Grace ran for the front door, getting him outside just in time for him to race to the closest tree and lift a stumpy leg. Toby, still in his Star War's pj's, trotted across the yard to join him in anointing the tree. — Jill Shalvis

I wondered if the owners would mind if I murdered someone in their front yard. A big red-headed someone. He was so full of shit, he'd make fantastic fertilizer for their garden — Karina Halle

When times get hard, remember Jesus. When tears come, remember Jesus. When fear pitches his tent in your front yard. When death looms, when anger singes, when shame weighs heavily. Remember Jesus. Can you still remember? Are you still in love with Him? Remember, Paul begged, remember Jesus. Before you remember anything, remember Him. If you forget anything, don't forget Him. — Max Lucado

She was staring at a picture of me and Sam when we were seven. No front teeth. We were standing in the front yard. It was summer and the leaves of her mulberry tree were behind us. The caption read: She was always my sister. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

Between building the new house on our newly subdivided lot, continuing work on some small flip homes, and managing the rentals, Chip had more work than he could do himself, so he had put a crew of workmen together. "The Boys," as we called them, were a talented bunch of hardworking guys who were just as adaptable as Chip seemed to be when it came to making my crazy ideas become reality. I truly could say, "Hey, why don't we take that tree out of the front yard and hang it upside down in the master bedroom," and they would do it, no questions asked. (All right, maybe there'd be a little head scratching. But then they'd shrug their shoulders and get to work.) — Joanna Gaines

The idea that a baby doesn't amount to anything! Why, one baby is just a house and a front yard full by itself. One baby can, furnish more business than you and your whole Interior Department can attend to. He is enterprising, irrepressible, brimful of lawless activities. — Mark Twain

Any country that enjoys fighting and bitching as a recreation as much as America does will always be, in some way or another, walking along a knife's edge. We're a nation that spends its afternoons watching white trash throw chairs at each other on Jerry Springer, its drive time listening to the partisan rantings of this or that hysterical political demagogue, and its late-night hours composing feverish blog entries full of anonymous screeds and denunciations. All of this shit is harmless enough so long as the power comes on every morning, fresh milk makes it to the shelves, there's a dial tone, and your front yard isn't underwater. But it becomes a problem when the magic grid goes down and suddenly there's no more machinery between you and whomever you happen to get off on hating. — Matt Taibbi

Fat Charlie looked at the front yard, at the faded plastic flamingos and the gnomes and the red mirrored gazing ball sitting on a small concrete plinth like an enormous Christmas tree ornament. He walked over to the ball, just like the one he had broken when he was a boy, and saw himself distorted, staring back from it. — Neil Gaiman

When I was this kid's age, you'd be burned alive for such talk. Being a homosexual was unthinkable, and so you denied it, and found a girlfriend who was willing to settle for the sensitive type. On dates, you'd remind her that sex before marriage was just that, sex: what dogs did in the front yard. This as opposed to making love, which was more what you were about. A true union of souls could take anywhere from eight to ten years to properly establish, but you were willing to wait, and for this the mothers loved you. You sometimes discussed it with them over an iced tea, preferably on the back porch when you girlfriend's brother was mowing the lawn with his shirt off. — David Sedaris

And there is something profoundly humbling about knowing God. I'm not talking about the trinket God or the genie-in-a-lamp God. I mean the God who invented the tree in my front yard, the beauty of my sweetheart, the taste of a blueberry, the violence of a river at flood. There are a lot of religious trends that would have us controlling God, telling us that if we do this that and the other, God will jump through our hoops like a monkey. But this other God, this real God, is awesome and strong, all-encompassing and passionate, and for reasons I will never understand, he wants to father us. — Donald Miller

TORONTO
When Cameron Crowe was flying to the Toronto film festival recently, he walked down the aisle of the plane and studied his fellow passengers sitting in front of their personal TV sets. They were just having the greatest time, there was so much joy in their eyes, .. And I looked to see what they were watching. And it was all out-and-out comedies. So many people watching The Longest Yard. And I just got the feeling that, 'You know what? People just like to let it all go, and have a laugh'. — Cameron Crowe

The houses looked like something a child might draw, a row of shaky squares with triangles on top. Add a door, add two windows. Think of putting a tree in the front yard, and then decide against it because branches aren't worth the trouble. — David Sedaris

You've got 3 minutes to tell the world something. Are you going to talk to them about being wasted in your front yard because you couldn't park your car, or are you going to talk to someone about something that could actually help them? — Isaac Slade

We have yielded no more than a few hundred yards of it as a prize to the enemy. But on every yard there lies a dead man. — Erich Maria Remarque

Alas, Measured Perfectly"

Saturday, August 25, 1888. 5:20 P.M.
is the name of a photograph of two
old women in a front yard, beside
a white house. One of the women is
sitting in a chair with a dog in her
lap. The other woman is looking at
some flowers. Perhaps the women are
happy, but then it is Saturday, August
25, 1888. 5:21 P.M., and all over. — Richard Brautigan

I tell myself that's what you get when you put thirty-one toilets on the most popular girl's front yard. People tend to treat you a little differently than before. — Kathryn Stockett

She kept her ears permanently tuned to the chicken voices outside, so knew immediately when a coyote had crept into the yard, and barreled screaming for the front door before the rest of us had a clue. (I don't know about the coyote, but I nearly needed CPR.) These hens owed their lives and eggs to Lily, there was no question. — Barbara Kingsolver

My childhood home was a large, light-blue, two-story house with a big front yard to play in. — Connor Franta

My dad put up a great hoop in our front yard in our driveway. I was in Oregon, so I had to be out there in the rain. We didn't always have a gym to go to. — Kevin Love

I am proud of being a Southerner. I wasn't about to let Southerners on my show be stupid or aw-shuckses who just sit on the front porch and spit in the yard. I wasn't about to do that, and I made that very clear from the start. I was kind of the gate-keeper on that stuff. — Andy Griffith

I didn't tell her about the free-for-alls on the school yard, muggings on the bus. A girl burned a cigarette hole in the back of another girl's shirt at nutrition right in front of me looking at me as if daring me to stop her. I saw a boy being threatened with a knife on the hallway outside my spanish class. Girls talked about their abortions in gym class. Claire didn't need to know about that. I wanted the world to be beautiful for her. I wanted things to work out. I always had a great day no matter what. — Janet Fitch

He updated his report, doing his best to tune out the two men who staggered into the police station, dragging each other.
"I want you to arrest this idiot bastard," the taller one shouted, face contorted with rage. "He shit on my front porch!"
Your dog shits all over my yard every day," the other one countered shoving.
Calm down, please," Leila said when they reached reception.
The tall one thumped a fist on the counter. "I want to make a police report. I stepped in that shit!"
Chase checked out the floor behind them, the questionable footprints. Made a mental note to walk around them when he left. — Dana Marton

You might be a redneck if there are four or more cars up on blocks in the front yard. — Jeff Foxworthy

The San Diego region in many ways is defined by our relationship with the ocean. It's our front yard and a beautiful playground for families and visitors. It should be clean, safe, and inviting. — Scott Peters