Quotes & Sayings About Our Backyard

We plunge ourselves into enormous debt and then take two and three jobs to stay afloat. We uproot our families with unnecessary moves just so we can have a more prestigious house. We grasp and grab and never have enough. And most destructive of all, our flashy cars and sports spectaculars and backyard pools have a way of crowding out much interest in civil rights or inner city poverty or the starved masses of India. Greed has a way of severing the cords of compassion. Richard J. Foster, 1981 — Catherine Whitmire

When you look through a window you gasp at the beautiful tree in the backyard or the magical sunrise coming over the horizon, No one looks at a window and is taken away by the complexity of the transparency of millions of atoms joined together to form, from our perception of a crystal clear yet structural opening to the exterior, the same is with life, if you spend your whole life being a medium to enable others then you will be nothing but a sheet of glass, overused, underappreciated, and fragile to opportunity — Addison Killebrew

Ah-there's our boy!" Bill pointed at the head of the crowd as they neared the stadium.
A lean,muscular boy was running, faster than the others,his back to Luce. His hair was dark brown and shiny, his shoulders deeply tanned and painted with intersecting red-and-black bands. When he turned his head slightly to the left,Luce caught a quick glimpse of his profile.He was nothing like the Daniel she had left in her parents' backyard. And yet-
"Daniel!" Luce said. "He looks-"
"Different and also precisely the same?" Bill asked.
"Yes."
"That's his soul you recognize. Regardless of how you two may look on the outside,you'll always know each other's souls."
It hadn't occured to Luce until now how remarkable it was that the recognized Daniel in every life. Her soul found his. "That's ... beautiful."
Bill scratched at a scab on his arm with a gnarly claw. "If you say so. — Lauren Kate

Leave a light on in the wild
Cause I'm coming in a little blind
Dreamer of a lighthouse in the woods
Shining a little light to bring us back home
Went to find you in the backyard
Hiding behind our busy lives
Dreamer of a lighthouse in the woods
To help us get back into the world
Cause I know I've seen you before
Won't you shine a little light on us now?
Won't you shine a little light in your own a backyard?
Won't you shine a little light in your own backyard?
Dreamer of a lighthouse in the woods — Patrick Watson

My son, Edward, at 4, to a neighbor boy who was being a pain in our backyard: "Oh, don't whine. my mom will throw you right out of here. — Cynthia Jo Mahaffey

We have enough to worry about with what's happening in our nation to worry about what's happening in California. Keep your feet grounded in your own backyard and together we're going to build communities that work. — Sher Valenzuela

We hated not knowing something. We hated not knowing who was going to walk Spanish down the hall. How would our bills get paid? And where would we find new work? We knew the power of the credit card companies and the collection agencies and the consequences of bankruptcy. Those institutions were without appeal. They put your name into a system, and from that point forward, vital parts of the American dream were foreclosed upon. A backyard swimming pool. A long weekend in Vegas. A low-end BMW. These were not Jeffersonian ideals, perhaps, on par with life and liberty, but at this advanced stage, with the West won and the Cold War over, they, too, seemed among our inalienable rights. — Joshua Ferris

Maybe what will really work is we all need to have a fear tree in our backyard or a small fear plant growing on our apartment windowsill. When we are feeling uneasy we pluck a few leaves and find the right place to put them. Champagne would be the number one choice but spaghetti works, too. Have a little fear at least once a week and you will build up your resistance. Like a vaccination. Then, when wars and hatreds come along you'll be able to recognize that's just another expression of Fear. No thanks, I've had my quota. — Nikki Giovanni

Maybe our best family trip started at Victoria Falls, which drenches you with spray and is so vast that it makes Niagara Falls seem like a backyard creek. Then we rented a car and made our way to Hwange National Park, which was empty of people but crowded with zebras, giraffes, elephants and more. — Nicholas Kristof

I got my first tennis racket on my seventh birthday. And because we had a tennis court in our backyard, I played every day. By ten I was playing competitively. — Tullian Tchividjian

To think that one child would go to bed hungry somewhere in this country is heartbreaking ... to know how many do is virtually incomprehensible. This is not only a problem that exists in the far reaches of the globe. It happens right here in our own backyard. Together, as concerned citizens, we must do more to make sure every child's needs are met. — Katie Couric

Our backyard looked like a marketplace. Valuable objects, precious rugs, silver candlesticks, Bibles and other ritual objects were strewn over the dusty grounds- pitiful relics that seemed never to have had a home. All this under a magnificent blue sky. — Elie Wiesel

When politicians like Sen. Joseph Lieberman target video game violence, perhaps it is to distract attention from the material conditions that give rise to a culture of domestic violence, the economic policies that make it harder for most of us to own our own homes, and the development practices which pave over the old grasslands and forests. Video games did not make backyard play spaces disappear; rather, they offer children some way to respond to domestic confinement. — Henry Jenkins

My favorite times were spent in his backyard where he and his roommates had "let nature take its course," the weeds towering above our heads. We placed two chairs in the middle of that jungle and discussed what we didn't know we were discussing: What brings a writer and an engineer together? How can we reconcile our diverse interests into a pointed goal, a single aphorism on life? More simply stated: Why are we falling in love? — Megan Rich

Kristina, my wife, and I thought about this one day when the kids were, of course, watching television. And we took a big blanket and put it in the backyard and said, 'Let's go out on our back and look at the sky and call it sky television.' We saw all kinds of things. — Clyde Edgerton

As the refugee crisis unfolds across Europe, another is looming in our backyard. The number of children crossing the southwest border unaccompanied has quietly surged more than a year after President [Barack] Obama referred to the problem as a quote "urgent humanitarian situation." — Joy-Ann Reid

My kids that's their backyard. I think when they're adults, their memories will be mostly of spending time at beach, the exploration, the freedom that you have. You take care of your house that you live in and we make our bed and we clean our cars and we do all that stuff, but yet we neglect sort of the place that really provides us with the greatest form of sustainability, which is the ocean. — Gabrielle Reece

When you see what goes on in Iraq on a daily basis - more people dying in car bombings - you almost brush it aside after a while. To actually comprehend the human tragedy of these events is overwhelming. We see so many images, but there's always the sense, for Americans, that it's not in our backyard. That's another reason why the war in Bosnia was so fascinating; because it really was in Europe's backyard. It was in Europe. And they didn't do anything about it for years. It took the Americans to end that war, really. That's a shame. — Richard Shepard

As a child, our house had a backyard lined with roses tended vigilantly by my mother. So the fragrance fills me with nostalgia for my youth. — Thelma Golden

I was not brought up to know the Earth in intimate detail. No one I can remember from my childhood ever suggested that the land I lived on and was surrounded by contained anything important to me. My sense of kinship was connected to my house, my bedroom (my one almost personal space), my family, and my friends. I had no conscious sense of connection to the wild; the closest I came was that I deeply loved the trees in our small suburban backyard. — Robin Rose Bennett

We didn't deny the obvious,
but we didn't entirely accept it either.
I mean, we said hello to it each morning
in the foyer. We patted its little head
as it made a mess in the backyard,
but we never nurtured it. Many nights the obvious showed up
at our bedroom door, in its pajamas,
unable to sleep, in need of a hug,
and we just stared at it like an Armenian,
or even worse - hid beneath the covers
and pretended not to hear its tiny sobs. — Jeffrey McDaniel

I'd love to paint our roof white - it's so hot down here in Texas! - and I'd love to have a rainwater collection system to save rain runoff for later. I also love to fantasize about keeping chickens in the backyard. — Katherine Center

A simple trick from the backyard astronomer: if you are having trouble seeing something, look slightly away from it. The most light-sensitive parts of our eyes (those we need to see dim objects) are on the edges of the region we normally use for focusing.
Eating animals has an invisible quality. Thinking about dogs, and their relationship to the animals we eat, is one way of looking askance and making something invisible visible. — Jonathan Safran Foer

NATO remains a military alliance, and we are against having a military alliance making itself at home right in our own backyard; in our historic territory. I simply cannot imagine that we would travel to Sevastopol to visit NATO sailors. Of course, most of them are wonderful guys, but it would be better to have them come and visit us, be our guests, rather than the other way round. — Vladimir Putin

But we never stopped believing that somewhere out there, in some stranger's backyard, our mother's rosebush was blossoming madly, wildly, pressing one perfect red flower after another out into the late afternoon light. — Julie Otsuka

The first sort of big present I remember getting from Santa Claus was quite a small telescope that I remember going into our backyard with my parents and figuring out how to assemble, and staring at the night sky, just for hours, with both of my parents. — Chelsea Clinton

I was sitting outside in our backyard on a summer day, I was around six, and suddenly the whole world dissolved before my eyes and I found myself in a timeless world of light. — Frederick Lenz

Obviously, the problem of the shadow plays a great role in all political conflicts. If the man who had this dream had not been sensible about his shadow problem, he could easily have identified the desperate Frenchman with the "dangerous Communists" of outer life, or the official plus the prosperous man with the "grasping capitalists." In this way he would have avoided seeing that he had within him such warring elements. If people observe their own unconscious tendencies in other people, this is called a "projection." Political agitation in all countries is full of such projections, just as much as the backyard gossip of little groups and individuals. Projections of all kinds obscure our view of our fellow men, spoiling its objectivity, and thus spoiling all possibility of genuine human relationships. — C. G. Jung

I look forward to the day when the solar system becomes our collective backyard - explored not only with robots, but with the mind, body, and soul of our species. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I dream of Morocco and Paris, and a koi pond in the backyard. Making art, supporting art, learning art. Late-night talks with soul sisters who make me feel crazy blessed and motivated. Stage presence. Books and more books. Film. Belly laughs. I dream about communion. My man. Our son. Always. I dream of sitting around a fire with leaders and lovers of progress. Being able to give yeses that open doors and new dimensions for people. I dream of tenderness and innovation. I dream of invitations that humble me, and magical connections with people I recognize on a cellular level. I dream that we band together to leverage change. I dream of feeling more electric and sweet every single day. Mostly, I dream of being amazed. How 'bout you? — Danielle LaPorte

Not in My Backyard (NIMBY) does not work. Opiate addicts live in our communities and in our families & they work in our businesses. — Steven Kassels

Chances are, the aliens will not want to land on our backyard, or even the White House lawn, with their flying saucers. They may have tiny, robotic self-replicating probes which can reach near light speed and can proliferate around the galaxy. So instead of the Enterprise and huge star ships, the aliens might actually send tiny probes to explore the universe. One might land on our lawn and we won't even know. — Michio Kaku

It's funny how these days, when every household has its own inter-continental ballistic missile, you hardly even think about them ... A lot of us, though, have started painting the missiles different colors, even decorating them with our own designs, like butterflies or stenciled flowers. They take up so much space in the backyard, they might as well look nice, and the government leaflets don't say that you have to use the paint they supply. — Shaun Tan

Anyway, Patrick bought me a tiara. He also bought me a pony. My mommy wasn't happy about the pony, even though we have lots of space in the backyard of our new house. I have a new grandpa, too. We call him Ru because it's easier to say than his real name. He promised to take us toParis on Christmas break. He also bought me a tiara. My uncle Lor spends a lot of time in the library bus. He tells me all the time why it's important to write stuff down. So I am. He also bought me a tiara, and Mommy said, "Enough already." (So I didn't tell her that Drake and Darrius gave me one, too.) — Michele Bardsley

The summer has seized you,
as when, last month in Amalfi, I saw
lemons as large as your desk-side globe-
that miniature map of the world-
and I could mention, too,
the market stalls of mushrooms
and garlic bugs all engorged.
Or I even think of the orchard next door,
where the berries are done
and the apples are beginning to swell.
And once, with our first backyard,
I remember I planted an acre of yellow beans
we couldn't eat. — Anne Sexton

He'd helped us build a garden in our backyard and I'd forced him to watch a season of The Bachelor with me. (" Why does he not just buy more roses?") — R.S. Grey

My parents had a gardener when I was growing up, and he and I would dig in the dirt together - my mom and dad were definitely not digging with me! When I was 5, he helped me plant some corn in our backyard, and I remember how fascinating it was to watch it grow. Little did I know that 50 years later I'd be growing corn in a different way. — Howard Graham Buffett

Ghostly legends dot the Prairie State from its big cities to its small towns. These stories make each community unique in a way that no other landmark ever could But Michael Kleen understands that these ghosts are more than just stories. As a folklorist and historian, Kleen shows readers the connection between our past and our present. Haunting Illinois is more than just a ghostly travel guide, it's an adventure offering new insight on the haunts you know, but also takes you on a trip to the spirits in your own backyard. — Jeff Belanger

Donning a glove for a backyard toss, or watching a ball game, or just reflecting upon our baseball days, we are players again, forever young. — John Thorn

Anyway, it was Oscar who called me to remind me that our nephew, Lydia's son Garnett, was turning eleven years old. Fuck my life. I hated that kid. He smelled like asparagus, and he sweated way too much for a healthy child; but then Garnett, given his propensity for biting teachers and catching chipmunks in the backyard only to bury them alive, was no normal kid. He was a case study for sociopathic behavior in the making. A walking, talking, farting, sweaty, odorous, chipmunk-burying cry for help. — Richard J. O'Brien

If you can't reuse or repair an item, do you ever really own it? Do you ever really own it? Do you ever develop the sense of pride and proprietorship that comes from maintaining an object in fine working order?
We invest something of ourselves in our material world, which in turn reflects who we are. In the era of disposability that plastic has helped us foster, we have increasingly invested ourselves in objects that have no real meaning in our lives. We think of disposable lighters as conveniences
which they indisputably are; ask any smoker or backyard-barbecue chef
and yet we don't think much about the tradeoffs that that convenience entails. — Susan Freinkel

The next day I lay out on the grass in our backyard and I looked straight into the sun, the way my mother had told me never to do because it would damage my eyes. I thought that I would grow up to be a famous artist and everything and everyone I saw, everything and everyone I painted, would be blinding to look at. — Karen Joy Fowler

I grew up in a very modest home. We grew a lot of our food in our backyard. We fished; my brothers hunted. — Martha Stewart

He leaned forward and plucked something out of my hair. 'What - ?' He held the dead leaf before me.
'Must have gotten that rolling around with Alexi in the backyard.' I blinked and looked at him. 'That sounded so wrong.'
He nodded, eyebrow quirked. Waiting.
'I'm trying to learn a few things from your more experienced brother so I'm ready for our big event.'
His expression didn't change.
'Yee-ahhh. Not any better, huh?' I laughed. Our big event could mean two vastly different things to Pietr. 'Lemme just run through the other ways I could get this wrong: Alexi's teaching me some moves. He's trying to put the hurt on me. He was putting me into some positions I've never tried before ... I snorted. I couldn't help myself.
A muscle near Pietr's left eye twitched.
'He's teaching me to fight!' I laughed, grabbing his wrists. — Shannon Delany

I grew up in northern California, where it was consistently in the hundreds in the summertime. My dad didn't think he should have to turn on the air conditioning when we had a swimming pool in our backyard; it was our built-in air conditioner. — Summer Sanders

this is real, and it is happening now, just as it happened before: We are under the big tree in my backyard, on that patch of dirt where we used to build fairy houses from moss and sticks and scraps of birch. It is late afternoon. All around us is golden light. We have been together all day, in our cutoff shorts and bare feet. It is the start of fifth grade, the start of being the oldest in the school. Next year, we will be the youngest all over again. But not yet. We are playing that hand-slapping game, the one we like to play at recess. You hold your hands out, palms up, and I place mine lightly on top. You pull yours out and try to slap mine. You hit air three times. On the fourth try, your — Ali Benjamin

A bear and a deer are both wild animals. We allow the deer to roam in our backyard but we do not give the same right to the bear. It is because the bear is dangerous. Neither the bear nor the deer have rights. We humans give them rights. Taking in account our own security, we give to some animals some rights and deny the same to other animals. — Ali Sina

It was like when we were little kids and we played games on the ivy-covered hillside in the backyard. We were warriors and wizards and angels and high elves and that was our reality. If someone said, Isn't it cute, look at them playing, we would have smiled back, humoring them, but it wasn't playing. It was transformation. It was our own world. Our own rules. — Francesca Lia Block

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

I'll save the sacking for later," he continues. "We can mimic the plays of our conjugal union in the privacy of my backyard. We can roll around on the lawn like animals and invent our own naughty games-Naked Leap Frog-Marshal May I-Hide the Peak-Red Light, Green Light District-Obstacle Intercourse-Hot Lava-Capture the Sector-Skyla Says-the possibilities are endless. Our throbbing loins will rep the victory. The entire scenario is, as you would say-made of win."~ Marshall — Addison Moore

There's a huge fucking missile launcher in our backyard and apparently the only thing between us and Armageddon is some guy who's afraid of a duck. — Louise Penny

When we hang up, I sigh long and look out the window to the darkness over the ocean, no delineation between water and sky. It's always disorienting when I speak to my mother, that pull of her voice back into our old life even though both of us have tried to move beyond it.

In her soft Caribbean accent I hear my brother's laughter, see us both as children playing together in the backyard when it was still covered in crunch green grass and our toys were new.

Mami's voice was the song of our home, even with no father, even as we lived with that black mass of the unspoken, even with the marks on our bones we didn't know we carried.

Through all life's uncertainty, we felt anchored by the love in her voice. — Patricia Engel

I've lived here ... my whole life. It's where I lost all my baby teeth. Where tiny hamster, gerbil, and bird skeletons lie in rotted-out cardboard coffins beneath the oak tree in our backyard. Also where, if some future archaeologist goes digging, they'll find the remains of a plush toy: a gray terrier named Toto I buried after the accident. — Jennifer McMahon

My brother Bill, who is a year older, is a climber, and when I was in the seventh grade, he taught me how to rappel off the frozen waterfall in our backyard. — Ann Bancroft

I've got four brothers, so with them and all our friends we had these sports parties in the basement. We'd play basketball, mini-sticks, baseball in the backyard, football, whatever it was. We were busy 24/7. — Rob Gronkowski

On this side of the wall is our house; in our backyard there is nothing. Nothing but red dust and round-headed black ants streaming and one juicy banana trunk stabbed brown--jab jab jab--never dead. I am always looking over the wall for Tissa. — Romesh Gunesekera

John Kennedy led us on a journey to discover the moon. Obama needs to lead us on a journey to rediscover, rebuild and reinvent our own backyard. — Thomas Friedman

If I had a magic wand, I would live in a building in New York, big enough so my friends, my family could all have apartments in it. We'd raise our kids in the same space and have backyard barbecues and get old and fat together. — Liz Murray

The dog next-door had settled down, and the neighbourhood seemed stunned by this event occurring in our backyard. It was like it could sense it. It could sense some form of tragedy and helplessness being played out, and to tell you the truth, it all surprised me. I was so used to things just going on, oblivious and ignorant to all feeling. — Markus Zusak

The solar system should be viewed as our backyard, not as some sequence of destinations that we do one at a time. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

I spent my first 4 years living in the tiny town of Snug, by the sea near Hobart. Curious about animals, I would pick up ants in our backyard and jellyfish on the beach. — Elizabeth Blackburn

A mockingbird has moved into our neighborhood. It perches atop a telephone pole behind our backyard. Every morning it is the first thing I hear. It is impossible to be unhappy when listening to a mockingbird. So stuffed with songs it is, it can't seem to make up it's mind which to sing first, so it sings them all, a dozen different songs at once, in a dozen different voices. On and on it sings without a pause, so peppy, even frantic, as if its voice alone is keeping the world awake. — Jerry Spinelli

What's he doing?" Mary Lou asked. "What's he doing?"
"Getting a spoon. I was was right-he went out to buy ice cream."
The light blinked out, and Morelli disappeared. Mary Lou and I scuttled across Morelli's backyard and squinted into his window.
"Do you see him?" Mary Lou asked.
"No. He's disappeared."
"I didn't hear the front door open."
"No, and he's got the television on. He's just out of sight somewhere."
Mary Lou crept closer. "Too bad he's got the shades pulled on his front windows."
"I'll try to be more considerate next time," Morelli said, standing inches behind us.
Mary Lou and I yelped and instinctively sprang away, but Morelli had both of us by the back of our jackets. — Janet Evanovich

In the Church, when we talk about 'the world', we often create an us and them situation and end up planting the seeds of all that we feel wrong with the world in the soil of our own backyard. — Steve Scott

YEARS AGO I WORKED ON A GOVERNMENT TASK force studying fatherhood and healthy families. As we met in DC, I learned one of the main causes of the breakdown of the American family was the Industrial Revolution. When men left their homes and farms to work on assembly lines, they disconnected their sense of worth from the well-being of their wives and children and began to associate it with efficiency and productivity in manufacturing. While the Industrial Revolution served the world in terrific ways, it was also a mild tragedy in our social evolution. Raising healthy children became a woman's job. Food was no longer grown in the backyard, it was bought at a store with money earned from the necessary separation of the father. Within a few generations, then, intimacy in family relationships began to be monopolized by females. — Donald Miller

If our culture is to be transformed, it will happen from the bottom up - from ordinary believers practicing apologetics over the backyard fence or around the barbecue grill. — Charles Colson

On my seventh birthday party:
No, you can't have a bouncy house at your birthday party ... What do you mean, why? Have you ever thought to yourself, where would I put a god-damned bouncy house in our backyard? ... Yeah, that's right, that's the kind of shit I think about , that you just think magically appears. — Justin Halpern

I had one of the most outdoorsy childhoods you could imagine. I basically lived in the woods until I was 13. My dad and I built a huge treehouse in our backyard in Chesterfield, about 30 feet in the air. And we'd vacation on an island in Michigan, where I hunted a deer that we ate. — Gabriel Basso

Somehow, for the most part, our parents and grandparents managed to disagree with their neighbors and still remain neighborly. And they usually did it from their front porches. Today, most of us don't even have front porches. We have retreated to the backyard, where a single opinion can be isolated and enforced by a privacy fence. — Andy Andrews

We look in our own backyard and say, 'How do we help at-risk families, at risk youth? How do we think through some of the problems affecting the Pacific Northwest and make some change there?' — Melinda Gates

Instinct tells me to go to Hannah's, but she doesn't live there anymore and that's when I realize the major difference between my mother and Hannah. My mother deserted me at the 7-Eleven, hundred of kilometers away from home.
Hannah, however, did the unforgivable.
She deserted me in our own backyard. — Melina Marchetta

Even at an early age, I rebelled against my strict upbringing. When I was 9, I built myself a 'make-out fort' in our backyard from wood, filled it with candy, and invited my blond, blue-eyed neighbor over to kiss. — Azita Ghanizada

As a boy, I had two small aquaria in our backyard in which I watched, each spring, the nest building and other fascinating behaviours of sticklebacks. — Nikolaas Tinbergen

Whenever I renew a commitment to studying raptors or gulls or crows or the birds in my backyard, more are given, more show themselves. Our efforts are rewarded, our studies are enhanced in experience. I cannot explain this, and I am reluctant to sound to woo-woo but we can take this as confidently as if it came from the Oracle at Delphi: the more we prepare, the more we are "allowed" somehow to see. — Lyanda Lynn Haupt

After a decade this glum, we deserved a shot of 'Glee,' a show that restored our faith in the power of song, the beauty of dance, and the magic of 'spirit fingers' to chase our cares and woes into somebody else's backyard. — James Wolcott