Backyard Quotes

Anyone can take an adventure even if it's only in your own backyard. Let your imagination be your adventure and see where it takes you. ~ Carmela Dutra

I'll fight somebody in my backyard for free, just to see if I'm better than him. ~ Chuck Liddell

I was always dressing up as a kid in the backyard, building some sort of fort and having battles against imaginary enemies. It's often that same feeling when you're pretending for a living, but it's with bigger toys. ~ Jai Courtney

I'm sort of an old man, always tinkering in the backyard. Since I grew up playing outdoors, I still like to plant things, sit out on the deck, or go hiking. ~ Josh Duhamel

Did you get me that movie about Genghis Khan?
'It's in the Netflix queue, but that's not the surprise. You don't need to worry, it'll be something good. I just don't want you to feel depressed about going home.'
Oh, I won't. But it would be cool to have a stream like this in the backyard. Can you make one?
'Ummm... no.'
I figured. Can't blame a hound for trying.
Oberon was indeed surprised when we got back home to Tempe. Hal had made the arrangements for me and Oberon perked up as soon as we were dropped off by the shuttle from the car rental company.
'Hey, smells like someone's in my territory,' he said.
'Nobody could be here without my permission, you know that.'
'Flidais did it.'
'That isn't Flidais you smell, believe me.'
I opened the front door, and Oberon immediately ran to the kitchen window that gazed upon the backyard. He barked joyously when he saw what was waiting for him there.
'French poodles! All black and curly with poofy little tails!'
'And every one of them in heat.'
'Oh, WOW! Thanks Atticus! I can't wait to sniff their asses!'
He bounded over to the door and pawed at it because the doggie door was closed to prevent the poodles from entering.
'You earned it, buddy. Hold on, get down off the door so I can open it for you, and be careful, don't hurt any of them.'
I opened the door, expecting him to bolt through it and dive into his own personal canine harem, but instead he took one ~ Kevin Hearne

I fully believe in ghosts. I have, my entire life. The first house I ever lived in was haunted. There was a grave of a man in the backyard. I was just a baby then, but my parents would tell me that every night, at the same time, they would hear someone walking up the stairs. ~ Meaghan Rath

Each year before the first rain after the harvest in Spring, I would look at the dry peach tree that I know so well at our backyard and anticipating that in summer it will be covered in an overgrown hedge unless my father who was a committed gardner of note take a weekend off from Jo'burg during the pruning season to prune it. Even now, I still remember with crystal clarity my childhood mood - warm days in Schoonoord with rich nostalgia of green scenery and flowers flowering everywhere.

One evening I was sitting at the veranda of our firehut looking at the orange tree between the plat (flat - roofed) house and the big L - shaped house - the tree served as a shelter from the sun for the drinking water pot next to the plat house - suddenly the weather changed, the wind howled, the tree swayed, the loose corrugated iron sheets on roof of he house clattered and clanged, the open windows shuts with a bang and the sky made night a day, and I was overwhelmed with that feeling of childhood joy at the approaching rain. All of a sudden, the deafening of steady pouring rain. The raging storm beat the orange tree leaves while I sat there remembering that where the orange tree stood used to be our first house, a small triangular shaped mokhukhu ((tin house) made of red painted corrugated iron sheets salvaged from demolishing site in Witbank, also remembering that my aunt's mokhukhu was also made of the same type and colour of corrugated iron sheets. The ashen ground drunk m ~ Pekwa Nicholas Mohlala

Jesus was stoned, but no rock hit him. He slipped into the crowd and was found later teaching on a hill somewhere. History tells us that he did nothing wrong, and we sacrificed him anyway.
The day my father died, I assured him he was headed for heaven, though I had a hard time believing in something that floated so aimlessly through the minds of children. The concept seemed fair and unfair in such equal amounts that it appeared to cancel itself out. I'd never met someone so deserving of eternal bliss, yet from the time I was a child I was taught we all deserve hell. I wondered if heaven existed at all.
But I wanted everlasting life to be real for the man who let me lie on his chest on a hammock in the backyard and taught me not to fear thunder. One of the many things my father taught me not to fear.
His breaths were labored and aided by machines. He wore a white hospital gown. I remember thinking, "I can't believe my father's going to die in a gown."
"Are you afraid?" I asked.
"Not at all," he strained. "I'm going to be with the Lord."
I wished I shared his confidence. For him, it was a priceless thing no one could take.
I wished the fear of death was like the fear of a passing storm cloud - something we outgrow with understanding. For men like my dad, I guess it was. ~ Christopher Hawke

Life is wonderful and strange...and it's also absolutely mundane and tiresome. It's hilarious and it's deadening. It's a big, screwed-up morass of beauty and change and fear and all our lives we oscillate between awe and tedium. I think stories are the place to explore that inherent weirdness; that movement from the fantastic to the prosaic that is life....

What interests me - and interests me totally - is how we as living human beings can balance the brief, warm, intensely complicated fingersnap of our lives against the colossal, indifferent, and desolate scales of the universe. Earth is four-and-a-half billion years old. Rocks in your backyard are moving if you could only stand still enough to watch. You get hernias because, eons ago, you used to be a fish. So how in the world are we supposed to measure our lives - which involve things like opening birthday cards, stepping on our kids' LEGOs, and buying toilet paper at Safeway - against the absolutely incomprehensible vastness of the universe?

How? We stare into the fire. We turn to friends, bartenders, lovers, priests, drug-dealers, painters, writers. Isn't that why we seek each other out, why people go to churches and temples, why we read books? So that we can find out if life occasionally sets other people trembling, too? ~ Anthony Doerr

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

My father had not been outside the house except to drive back and forth to work or sit out in the backyard, for months, nor had he seen his neighbors. Now he looked at them, from face to face, until he realized I had been loved by people he didn't even recognize. His heart filled up, warm again as it had not been in what seemed so long to him- save small forgotten moments with Buckley, the accidents of love that happened with his son.

~pgs 209-210; Buckley, Lindsey and Jack on Susie ~ Alice Sebold

I believe in myself like a five-year-old believes in himself. They say look at me, look at me! Then they do a flip in the backyard. It won't even be that amazing, but everyone will be clapping for them. ~ Kanye West

I loved driving with Marlboro Man. I saw things I'd never seen before, things I'd never even considered in my two and a half decades of city life. For the first time ever, I began to grasp the concept of north, south, east, and west, though I imagine it would take another twenty-five years before I got them straight. I saw fence lines and gates made of welded iron pipe, and miles upon miles of barbed wire. I saw creeks--rocky, woodsy creeks that made the silly water hazard in my backyard seem like a little mud puddle. And I saw wide open land as far as the eye could see. I'd never known such beauty.
Marlboro Man loved showing me everything, pointing at pastures and signs and draws and lakes and giving me the story behind everything we saw. The land, both on his family's ranch and on the ranches surrounding it, made sense to him: he saw it not as one wide open, never-ending space, but as neatly organized parcels, each with its own purpose and history. "Betty Smith used to own this part of our ranch with her husband," he'd say. "They never had kids and were best friends with my grandparents." Then he'd tell some legend of Betty Smith's husband's grandfather, remembering such vivid details, you'd think he'd been there himself. I absorbed it all, every word of it. The land around him pulsated with the heartbeats of all who'd lived there before…and as if it were his duty to pay honor to each and every one of them, he told me their names, their stories, their relationship, the ~ Ree Drummond

The eastern sky was red as coals in a forge, lighting up the flats along the river. Dew had wet the million needles of the chaparral, and when the rim of the sun edged over the horizon the chaparral seemed to be spotted with diamonds. A bush in the little backyard was filled with the little rainbows as the sun touched the dew. ~ Larry McMurtry

When I was a boy, that was all I wanted - to grow a pair of wings and get up into the sky. I had a basement full of failed wing projects. Boards and capes and motors, even a pile of found feathers I once tried to glue together with a bottle of Elmer's; you should have seen your grandmother's face. But I never got any higher than the backyard fence I'd launch from. I never got inside a cloud. Your raven did. ~ Beth Kephart

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

Walk down any sidewalk in any city and eventually you'll find a flower growing out of a crack in the concrete, tenaciously grasping for life, barely enough earth for it to clench hold of. This little flower has seeded, sprouted, and blossomed, despite thousands of feet walking over and around it every day. This flower is a survivor, thriving better than if it were in my Aunt Tilda's fucking backyard garden with her fussing over it day and night and giving it all the goddamned care she thought it needed. Yeah, eventually, some careless asshole's gonna trample and kill that flower, but another one's gonna replace it. [...] I'll always believe in you, Raeburn. You just have to find another crack in the sidewalk and blossom. Don't be another Kurt Cobain. Don't give up. People need you. ~ Pete Conrad

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

Callie scrambled from under the covers, dashed around the bed, and flung herself into Luce's arms. "They kept telling me you were going to be okay, but in that lying, we're-also-completely-terrified-we're-just-not-going-to-explain-a-word-to-you kind of way. Do you even realize how thoroughly spooky that was? It was like you physically dropped off the face of the Earth-"
Luce hugged her back tightly. As far as Callie knew, Luce had been gone only since the night before.
"Okay, you two," Molly growled, pulling Luce away from Callie, "you can OMG your faces off later. I didn't lie in your bed in that cheap polyester wig all night enacting Luce-with-stomach-flue so you guys could blow our cover now." She rolled her eyes. "Amateurs."
"Hold on. You did what?" Luce asked.
"After you...disappeared," Callie said breathlessly, "we knew we could never explain it to your parents. I mean, I could barely fathom it after seeing it with my own eyes. When Gabbe fixed up the backyard, I told your parents you felt sick and had gone to bed, and Molly pretended to be you and-"
"Lucky I found this in your closet." Molly twirled a short wavy black wig around one finger. "Halloween remnant?"
"Wonder Woman." Luce winced, regretting her middle school Halloween costume, and not for the first time.
"Well, it worked."
It was strange to see Molly-who'd once sided with Lucifer-helping her. But even Molly, like Cam and Roland, didn't want to fall again. So here they w ~ Lauren Kate

I have a garden in my backyard that's completely organic, which I'm very proud of. ~ Ariana Grande

It's an odd thing, a backyard, a little strip of nature, a little reminder of the rest of it, elsewhere. ~ Tara June Winch

When I first made photographs, they were too plain to be considered art and I wasn't considered an artist. I didn't get any attention at all. The people who looked at my work thought, well, that's just a snapshot of the backyard. Privately I knew otherwise and through stubbornness stayed with it ... ~ Walker Evans

If your Soviet neighbor is trying to set fire to your house, you can't be worrying about the Arab down the block. If suddenly it's the Arab in your backyard , you can't be worrying about the People's Republic of China and if one day the ChiComs show up at your front door with an eviction notice in one hand and a Molotov cocktail in the other, then the last thing you're going do is look over his shoulder for a walking corpse. ~ Max Brooks

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

Right-thinking people are not supposed to discuss any meteorological or geophysical event - a hurricane, a wildfire, a heat wave, a drought, a flood, a blizzard, a tornado, a lightning strike, an unfamiliar breeze, a strange tingling on the neck - without immediately invoking the climate crisis. It causes earthquakes, plagues and backyard gardening disappointments. Weird fungus on your tomato plants? Classic sign of global warming. ~ Joel Achenbach

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

Modern US consumers now get to taste less than 1 percent of the vegetable varieties that were grown here a century ago. Those old-timers now lurk only in backyard gardens and on farms that specialize in direct sales
if they survive at all. Many heirlooms have been lost entirely. ~ Barbara Kingsolver

He [Hugo Chavez] put poverty at the heart of political debate. Rightly so, given the country's immense inequality and poverty. He invested heavily in social programs such as literacy, health clinics, and education. He promoted Venezuela's indigenous culture and urged compatriots to take pride in its pre-Columbian history. He called time on the US treating Latin America as its backyard. ~ Rory Carroll

He rode home with her to New Jersey and she took him into the backyard to look at her father's roses . . . to look at her childhood, to look at what pricked and stung and was difficult to forgive. He looked at the house and the yard and her family . . . And it seemed to her that everything changed. Was forgiven. The ~ Kathleen Collins

Jack...why is there a dragon in our backyard? ~ Kyoko M.

I rail a lot against passion, because I feel like passion can be very exclusionary, and very elitist, and it can leave a lot of people feeling like they don't belong... I'm much more interested in allowing people to follow curiosity, which is a much more gentle impulse that doesn't require that you sacrifice your entire life for something. It's more of kind of a scavenger hunt, where you're allowed to pick up these tiny beautiful little clues along the pathway. It's more of a tap on the shoulder that asks you to turn your attention one inch to the left. Oh that's a little bit mildly interesting - what is that? Okay now I'm going to take that clue... I'm going to take it another inch, and I'm going to take it another inch. Rather than this idea that the symphony is born whole, because you sit down and you're struck by lightening and then you start to create. Curiosity I think, is a far more friendly way to do creativity than passion."

...this is why I say the path of curiosity is the scavenger hunt, because it took my probably three years between "gee it would be nice to put some plants in my backyard" to here I am in the South Pacific exploring the history of moss and inventing this giant novel. You know I think everybody thinks that creativity comes in lightening strikes, but I think it comes with whispers. And then the whispers can grow thunderous over time if you are patient enough to explore it, almost in the way that a scientist would.

Be open to - ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

There is a corner of every man's soul that would prefer him dead. That whispers poison in his ear in the still hours of the evening, puts spurs to his side when he stands atop a ledge. For the weak and the misbegotten, the suggestion alone proves sufficient, and the unfortunate runs himself a hot bath and adds his life-blood to it, or drinks a few pints of backyard whiskey and goes swimming in the canal. But most of us are too stubborn or cowardly to make a clean go of it, and this bit that hates us has to start thinking sly. ~ Daniel Polansky

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'm walking off the dance floor when I see him. Peter, in a suit, standing to the side, beside the dogwood tree. He looks so handsome I can hardly stand it. I cross the backyard, and he watches me the whole time. My heart is pounding so hard. Is he here for me? Or did he just come because he promised my dad?
When I'm standing in front of him, I say, "You came."
Peter looks away. "Of course I came."
Softly I say, "I wish I could take back the things I said the other night. I don't even remember all of them."
Looking down, he says, "But you meant them, right? So it's a good thing you said them then, because somebody had to and you were right."
"Which part?" I whisper.
"About UNC. About me not transferring there." He lifts his head, his eyes wounded. "But you should have told me my mom talked to you."
I take a shaky breath. "You should have told me you were thinking about transferring! You should've told me how you were feeling, period. You shut down after graduation; you wouldn't let me in. You kept saying everything was going to be fine."
"Because I was fucking scared, okay!" he bursts out. He looks around to see if anyone heard, but the music is loud, and everyone is dancing; no one is looking at us, and it's like we are alone here in this backyard.
"What were you so scared about?" I whisper.
His hands tighten into fists at his sides. When he finally speaks, his voice comes out raw, like he hasn't used it in a while. "I was sc ~ Jenny Han

I come from where Mike Tyson came from. I come from right across the street from Jay-Z. I didn't have a pond in my backyard. I saw violence. ~ Tracy Morgan

They veer off the main highway onto a private road that travels away from the ocean. A thin row of tall bamboo lines both sides of the narrow roadway that continues 150 feet before dead-ending at a lavish, single-story, traditional Japanese-style home. The entire property is surrounded by an eight-foot-high maroon wooden fence with three separate entrance gates, one in the front, next to the house, and two others in opposite corners of the triangular-shaped backyard. ~ Joseph E. Henning

Merit," Catcher said, sitting beside Mallory on the couch, an arm around her shoulders. "It's nice to see you clothed again."
"And now that she is," Gabriel said, standing, "we should get moving."
"Where are we going, exactly?" Catcher asked.
"To a land beyond space and time," Jeff said drawing an arc in the air. "Where the rules of mortals have no meaning."
Gabriel looked up at the ceiling as if he might find patience there. "We're going to the Brecks' backyard. Into the woods, right here in Illinois, where most of us are quite mortal."
"Illi-noise," Jeff said with cheeky enthusiasm. "Because the wolves will howl. ~ Chloe Neill

I was three years old. I was messing with my grandparents' dog in Las Vegas, and he decided to pick me up by my head and run around the backyard with me. ~ Brian Austin Green

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

Max's father likes to tell people that he and Max play catch every night in the backyard, like they are doing tonight. He tells everyone he can, sometimes more than once, but he usually waits until Max's mom isn't around before he says it. Sometimes he says it just after she leaves the room if he knows that she's coming right back.

But he and Max don't really play catch. Max's dad throws the ball to Max, and Max lets it hit the ground and roll, and when it stops moving, he picks it up and tries to throw it back. Except Max's dad never stands close enough for Max to reach him, even though he tells Max to "Step into it!" and "Throw with your body!" and "Give it your all, son!"

Whenever they play catch, Max's dad calls Max "son" instead of "Max."

But even if Max steps into it or gives it his all (I don't know what either of those things mean, and I don't think Max does either,) the ball never reaches his dad.

If Max's dad wants the ball to reach him, why doesn't he just stand closer? ~ Matthew Dicks

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

People in suburbia see trees differently than foresters do. They cherish every one. It is useless to speak of the probability that a certain tree will die when the tree is in someone's backyard ... You are talking about a personal asset, a friend, a monument, not about board feet of lumber. ~ Roger Swain

What Claire could do with the edible flowers that grew around the cranky apple tree in the backyard was the stuff of legend. Everyone knew that if you got Claire to cater your anniversary party, she would make aioli sauce with nasturtiums and tulip cups filled with orange salad, and everyone would leave the party feeling both jealous and aroused. And if you got her to cater your child's birthday party, she would serve tiny strawberry cupcakes and candied violets and the children would all be well behaved and would take long afternoon naps. Claire had a true magic to her cooking when she used her flowers. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

They snatched the girl off her tire swing in the backyard and dragged her into the woods; her body made a shallow track in the snow, from her world to mine. I saw it happen. I didn't stop it.
It had been the longest, coldest winter of my life. Day after day under a pale, worthless sun. And the hunger- hunger that burned and gnawed, an insatiable master. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

The question is, you know, will someone accidentally build a robot that takes over from us? And that's sort of like this lone guy in the backyard, you know - 'I accidentally built a 747.' I don't think that's going to happen. ~ Rodney Brooks

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

Black holes aren't an Earth Science topic, but Mr. Zerbiak is like that. One minute Adam Bell was asking a question about a meteoroid he found in his backyard, and the next Mr. Zerbiak was saying that he was "going a little off topic here, but ... " and of course everyone was suddnely all interested. If teachers pretended that everything they said was "off topic", we'd have a whole school full of straight-A students. ~ Carol Rifka Brunt

I don't know anyone around here who would want to cross the desert just to see the Pyramids," said the merchant. "They're just a pile of stones. You could build one in your backyard. ~ Paulo Coelho

Mice and any rodentia. Guinea pigs. Even rabbits, I can't stand. Rabbits are cousins to rats. It's a class thing. If you had to grow up with rats scampering in your backyard, because the city services were cut in half and the population in your neighborhood doubled, then that also is going to mean that the flora and fauna are going to grow as well. So that's a part of it. That's why I can't go to Hindu countries where they respect rats and mice, and I can't go camping. ~ Sandra Cisneros

She saw Daniel hovering over her in his simple peasant's clothes...but then, a moment later, he was bare-chested, with long blond hair...and suddenly he wore a knight's helmet, whose visor he lifted to kiss her lips...but before he did,he shifted into his present self, the Daniel she'd left in her parents' backyard in Thunderbolt when she stepped through into time.
This was the Daniel, she realized, she'd been looking for all along. She reached for him,she called his name, but then he changed again. And again. She saw more Daniels than she'd ever thought possible,each one more gorgeous than the last.They folded into each other like a vast accordion, each image of him tilting and altering in the light of the sky behind him.The cut of his nose,the line of his jawbone, the tone of his skin,the shape of his lips, all whirled in and out of focus,morphing all the time. Everything changed except his eyes.
His violet eyes always stayed the same. They haunted her,hiding something terrible,something she didn't understand. Something she didn't want to understand.
Fear?
In the visions,the terror in Daniel's eyes was so intense Luce actually wanted to look away from their beauty. What could someone as powerful as Daniel fear?
There was only one thing: Luce's dying.
She was experiencing a montage of her death over and over and over again. This was what Daniel's eyes looked like, throughout time,just before her life went up in flames. She had seen this fear in ~ Lauren Kate

Kage - the man I'd only hours ago claimed as my soulmate, the man I'd changed everything for, the man I felt like I would die without seeing for eleven days - was walking out of my life. And all I could do was lie there in my parents' backyard, with my pants around my knees and my heart in my throat, and cry myself dry. ~ Maris Black

The drenched backyard full of runoff, and tiny, slimy, uncertain yard critters who had expected to remain buried in months of hard mud, peeking their heads out into the balmy New Year's air, asking, Wait, what? ~ Nina Riggs

The most she knew about gardens was the Bakers' own backyard, which contained one large mulberry tree and a rosebush, plus the window boxes where her mother grew runner beans. She knew there was earth under the plants and that the earth contained worms. She shuddered. ~ Diana Wynne Jones

When the homebrewers stop entering the profession, and the backyard breweries are squeezed out, then it will become stagnant. ~ Greg Noonan

I could win you a goldfish."
"I don't think that's be fair to the goldfish," Gemma said. "I've had about a dozen of them, and they all seem to die within days of me getting them."
"Oh, yeah." Alex smiled crookedly. "I remember you making your dad bury them out in the backyard."
"They were my pets, and they deserved a proper burial."
"I better be careful around you." Alex stepped back from her cautiously, giving her a wide berth. "You're a goldfish mass murderer. I don't know what you're capable of."
"Stop!" Gemma laughed. "I didn't kill them on purpose! I was little. I think I overfed them. Out of love, though."
"That's even scarier," he teased. "Do you plan to kill me with kindness?"
"Maybe." She narrowed her eyes at him and tried to look menacing, making him laugh. ~ Amanda Hocking

I wouldn't support Limp Bizkit being on some snuff backyard brawling, fighting contest. ~ Fred Durst

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

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

We go to several farms and look at foraging, and throw backyard parties with friends. We want to let people know they can enjoy a sense of Tuscany anywhere. ~ Debi Mazar

I wonder why no one called the police about the rocket launcher? God knows my neighbors usually report it if I so much as fart in my backyard. (Bubba) ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

This was where war happened, in someone's backyard. Sometimes it was yours. Often, it was someone's a world away. But it did happen. In this moment. In the next breath. Every day.
Every day, someone lived in the midst of destruction and chaos. Every day, someone's flower boxes filled with gunpowder's haze, a child's laughter turned to tears. There had been a day when someone watered those flowers in the evening's peaceful quiet and the children caught fireflies in mason jars. And that day will come again, when the crickets and the bullets no longer have to compete for the night's stage. But for now, all anyone could do was fight on the crickets' behalf. ~ Kelseyleigh Reber

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

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

BACKYARD GARDEN SALAD In wartime, patriotic families cultivated "Victory Gardens" to promote self-sufficiency and help the war effort. 4 cups mixed greens 1/4 cup fresh sprigs of dill 1/4 cup fresh flat-leaf parsley leaves 4 large basil leaves, rolled up and thinly sliced crosswise 1 large lemon, halved 1/4 cup fruity olive oil pinch of salt fresh ground black pepper to taste 1 cup toasted walnuts 3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese 1 cup fresh edible flowers; choose from bachelor's buttons, borage, calendulas, carnations, herb flowers (basil, chives, rosemary, thyme), nasturtiums, violas, including pansies and Johnny-jump-ups, stock Toss salad greens and herbs in a large bowl. Squeeze lemon juice (without the seeds) over the greens and season with olive oil, salt and pepper. Toss again. Add walnuts and feta and toss well. Divide salad and pansies among four serving plates and serve. (Source: Adapted from California Bountiful) ~ Susan Wiggs

In Hanover Park they highlighted the terrible plight of backyard dwellers and the fact that year after year nothing has been done to help you: the hope and despair you all live with every day. ~ Mangosuthu Buthelezi

It occurred to me that for a long time I tried not to write about my own backyard and my home. I suppose I was selfishly keeping it to my self. And in doing so, I was never able to get out into this incredible wilderness area - by the way, I live right at the edge of the most incredible wilderness area probably in the northern hemisphere. ~ Tim Cahill

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

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

The space center's proximity to my backyard came to signify an intersection between heaven and hell. Florida was somewhere between the two; it was America's phantom limb, a place where spaceships were catapulted out into the cosmos. Alligators emerged from brackish water. Vultures and hawks circled above. Mosquitoes patrolled the atmosphere at eye level. We shared an ocean with sharks and dolphins. There were no seasons, only variations of humidity. Time slithered, festering in a damp wake of recollections.

I believed in the Bermuda Triangle. I thought it would move in over Florida one night. By dusk an unknown force would vaporize us through a tear in the atmosphere. We'd be stuck, wandering in a parallel version of the same place, unaware that we were dead but dreaming.

People came here to vanish. ~ Paul Kwiatkowski

Learn to be brave and adventurous because you'll never discover your place in the world, if you're too afraid to leave your own backyard. ~ Nina Guilbeau

Alex, please."
He balls his fists. "Stop saying my name. You don't know me anymore."
"I do know you." I'm still crying, swallowing back spasms in my throat, struggling to breathe. This is a nightmare and I will wake up. This is a monster-story, and he has come back to me a terror-creation, patched together, broken and hateful, and I will wake up and he will be here, and whole, and mine again. I find his hands, lace my fingers through his even as he tries to pull away. "It's me, Alex. Lena. Your Lena. Remember? Remember 37 Brooks, and the blanket we used to keep in the backyard - "
"Don't," he says. His voice breaks on the word.
"And I always beat you in Scrabble," I say. I have to keep talking, and keep him here, and make him remember. "Because you always let me win. And remember how we had a picnic one time, and the only thing we could find from the store was canned spaghetti and some green beans? And you said to mix them - "
"Don't."
"And we did, and it wasn't bad. We ate the whole stupid can, we were so hungry. And when it started to get dark you pointed to the sky, and told me there was a star for every thing you loved about me." I'm gasping, feeling as though I am about to drown; I'm reaching for him blindly, grabbing at his collar.
"Stop." He grabs my shoulders. His face is an inch from mine but unrecognizable: a gross, contorted mask. "Just stop. No more. It's done, okay? That's all done now."
"Alex, please - "
"Stop!" His v ~ Lauren Oliver

Being able to sync the same content among multiple devices provides a very convenient backup for Dropbox data. If your Mac laptop gets dropped in your backyard swimming pool, as long as it's been recently synced, you'll still be able to quickly access all of the files and folders stored in Dropbox folder on the desktop PC. ~ Ian Lamont

Yes, we all know that there's a good chance the missiles won't work properly when the government people finally come to get them, but over the years we've stopped worrying about that. Deep down, most of us feel it's probably better this way. After all, if there are families in faraway countries with their own backyard missiles, armed and pointed back at us, we would hope that they too have found a much better use for them. ~ Shaun Tan

With her children in the backyard, and her foot taped, Grace stands at the kitchen counter with a pencil and a pad of paper. She knows from long experience that sometimes a list is the only way from one side to the other. ~ Anita Shreve

Visualization

One way to calm your mind is to replace your maladaptive thoughts with a relaxing, happy scene. You probably can remember a place where the scenery completely relaxed you--maybe it was at the beach or in your backyard, lying in a hammock. In visualization, you focus on this calming memory. ~ Heather Moehn

Come to represent for all of us, I thought of all my friends from one end of the country to the other and how they were really all in the same vast backyard doing something so frantic and rushing-about. ~ Jack Kerouac

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

Back when I was five, I thought my mom was being mean to me, so I decided to run away. Carried my slingshot with me because I was a big strong man, you see. Could take care of myself. I believe I also took a flashlight and a package of Oreos."
Despite my embarrassement, I couldn't help smiling. "I think you packed better than I did."
I swaggered out of the house where we were staying and took myself all the way to ... the far corner of the backyard. There I made my stand. Stayed out there all day, until it started to reain. I hadn't thought about taking an umbrella."
The best laid plans." I sighed.
I know. It's tragic. I cam back in, all wet and my stomach aching from eating about twenty Oreo, and my mom
who is a smart lady even is she drives me nuts
well, she acted like nothing happened." Lucas shrugged. ~ Claudia Gray

In a culture in which "connection" usually refers to the strength of the cell phone signal, quieting the mind - even just sitting alone in the backyard, much less in the forest - can be a difficult rite of passage. ~ Jon Young

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

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

The first supermarket supposedly appeared on the American landscape in 1946. That is not very long ago. Until then, where was all the food? Dear folks, the food was in homes, gardens, local fields, and forests. It was near kitchens, near tables, near bedsides. It was in the pantry, the cellar, the backyard. ~ Joel Salatin

Football, you can go out and buy a football and play it in your backyard. Basketball, you can go out and play it in the schoolyard or in your driveway. Baseball, you get a glove and a bat and a ball and you go out and play in the neighborhood. You can't do that in hockey. ~ Jeremy Roenick

My backyard was replete with madness, it just grew indigenously in South Florida. ~ Karen Russell

Fences, unlike punishments, clearly mark out the perimeters of any specified territory. Young children learn where it is permissible to play, because their backyard fence plainly outlines the safe area. They learn about the invisible fence that surrounds the stove, and that Grandma has an invisible barrier around her cabinet of antique teacups. ~ Jeanne Elium

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

Ever look at a sink full of dishes and think, "Why don't I just bury these in the backyard? ~ Gina Barreca

From the line, watching, three things are striking: (a) what on TV is a brisk crack is here a whooming roar that apparently is what a shotgun really sounds like; (b) trapshooting looks comparatively easy, because now the stocky older guy who's replaced the trim bearded guy at the rail is also blowing these little fluorescent plates away one after the other, so that a steady rain of lumpy orange crud is falling into the Nadir's wake; (c) a clay pigeon, when shot, undergoes a frighteningly familiar-looking midflight peripeteia -- erupting material, changing vector, and plummeting seaward in a corkscrewy way that all eerily recalls footage of the 1986 Challenger disaster.

All the shooters who precede me seem to fire with a kind of casual scorn, and all get eight out of ten or above. But it turns out that, of these six guys, three have military-combat backgrounds, another two are L. L. Bean-model-type brothers who spend weeks every year hunting various fast-flying species with their "Papa" in southern Canada, and the last has got not only his own earmuffs, plus his own shotgun in a special crushed-velvet-lined case, but also his own trapshooting range in his backyard (31) in North Carolina. When it's finally my turn, the earmuffs they give me have somebody else's ear-oil on them and don't fit my head very well. The gun itself is shockingly heavy and stinks of what I'm told is cordite, small pubic spirals of which are still exiting the barrel from the Korea-vet who prec ~ David Foster Wallace

Suddenly, Shelby started, at the same time that we heard Cole's voice across the backyard: "Clear off, you psychotic bitch!"
She slid off into the darkness as the back door slammed.
"Thanks, Cole," I said. "That was incredibly subtle."
"That," replied Cole, "is one of my finest traits. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

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

My parents were kind of over protective people. Me and my sister had to play in the backyard all the time. They bought us bikes for Christmas but wouldn't let us ride in the street, we had to ride in the backyard. Another Christmas, my dad got me a basketball hoop and put it in the middle of the lawn! You can't dribble on grass. ~ Jimmy Fallon

The announcer, in milky tones, rolled out the commercial; it was all about some sort of washing powder that made laundry days a mere frolic in the backyard ~ Ruth Park

If you're going to bloody the human, would you be good enough to do it in the backyard? ~ J.R. Ward

Dorothy tries to sum it all up before leaving Oz. "It's that if ever I go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own backyard," she tells Glinda, the Good Witch of the North. "Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with. Is that it?"
"That's all it is," confirms Glinda. ~ Joey Green

The Australian backyard was once built for tradesmen and outdoor toilets. As suburbs spread, it became a playground and source of pride ... ~ Pete Munro

When a man comes to your house with a bag full of money, he certainly has seen more in your backyard than in the bag. ~ M.F. Moonzajer

Momma was with the pony last night. Lily and me have him in the mornings, and we give him a wash with the shammy cloths and a soapy bucket so he's ready for Jade to look after him the next night. I think Momma must ride him too rough because he's always sweating and white-eyed when we get him, pulling tight at his rope and spreading his wide beige lips. He won't settle forever and ever, he just turns circles around the stake. Me and Lily get nervy watching him paw scoops out of the backyard soil. ~ Kirsty Logan

Don't you kids get any ideas about dragging a trailer into the backyard. after you graduate from high school, i don't want to see you again. ~ Alison Bechdel

The men toasted their bottles, as they did when Mouse was mentioned. The part of their tattoo that no longer existed. The man had died on the job, protecting Blake because he was loyal to Beckett.
"And ... " Cole shot Beckett a look.
"You're unofficially known as Sparkles and Jesus." Beckett squinted as Cole pretended to be offended.
"I think it's only fair if we give you a nickname, Blake?" Cole asked.
Blake stood and added a log to the fire. It'd been burning steady since right after dinner. Being with his brothers like this was Beckett's favorite. It his wildest dreams he never pictured getting to sit with them in a Blake's backyard. ~ Debra Anastasia

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