Vacant Lot Quotes

Growth is an unavoidable part of life. Whether we mean for it to happen or not, our bodies continually nourish and regenerate themselves, our minds continually learn and expand, and our lives continually evolve. We have the power to craft our growth the way a landscaper crafts a majestic garden, or we can leave it to chance, allowing it to unfold wild as the weeds that spread across a vacant lot. ~ Scott Edmund Miller

These rocks are a release for my pent-up emotions. When I feel all tied up inside, I just stand here and throw rocks into that vacant lot!"
"Hello, Charlie Brown, you blockhead!"
"Sometimes I think I'm kind of a vacant lot myself ... ~ Charles M. Schulz

What will die with me the day I die? What pathetic or frail image will be lost to the world? The voice of Macedonio Fernandez, the image of a bay horse in a vacant lot on the corner of Sarrano and Charcas, a bar of sulfur in the drawer of a mahogany desk? ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Let me guess," said Clary. "On the inside it's an abandoned police station; from the outside, mundanes only see a condemned apartment building, or a vacant lot, or ... "
"Actually it looks like a Chinese restaurant from the outside," Luke said. "Takeout only, no table service."
"A Chinese restaurant?" Clary echoed in disbelief.
He shrugged. "Well, we are in Chinatown. This was the Second Precinct building once."
"People must think it's weird that there's no phone number to call for orders."
Luke grinned. "There is. We just don't answer it much. Sometimes, if they're bored, some of the cubs will deliver someone some mu shu pork."
"You're kidding."
"Not at all. The tips come in handy. ~ Cassandra Clare

I remember New York in the '80s as a place with vacant lots that would eventually give over to nature. Weeds would grow up, squirrels would move in. That entropy is gone now. It's too expensive to let a vacant lot go natural. ~ Moby

In that latitude the temperature flirted with a hundred degrees for a few of the dog days, but to a child it can hardly ever be too hot. I liked the sun licking the backs of my legs, and the sweat between my shoulder blades, and the violet evenings, with ice cream and fireflies, wherein the long day slowly cooled. I liked the ants piling up dirt like coffee grounds between the bricks of our front walk, and the milkweed spittle in the vacant lot next door. I liked the freedom of shorts, sneakers, and striped T-shirt, with freckles and a short hot-weather haircut.
We love easily in summer, perhaps, because we love our summer selves. ~ John Updike

Things got used until they were useless and then they were tossed into a heap in a vacant lot that served as the neighborhood dump. There discarded items sat until the scavengers with wooden pushcarts made their rounds, picking through the piles. Anything recyclable - bottles, wire, any kind of scrap - was carted away to a vast and stinking shantytown in another part of the city where there resided what seemed to be a caste of trash pickers who made a living from recycling Manila's refuse. ~ Steven Martin

I went back to the office and sat in my swivel chair and tried to catch up on my foot-dangling. There was a gusty wind blowing in at the windows and the soot from the oil burners of the hotel next door was drown-draughted into the room and rolling across the top of the desk like tumbleweed drifting across a vacant lot. I was thinking about going out to lunch and that life was pretty flat and that it would probably be just as flat if I took a drink and that taking a drink all alone at that time of day wouldn't be any fun anyway. ~ Raymond Chandler

What the Chronics are - or most of us - are machines with flaws inside that can't be repaired, flaws born in, or flaws beat in over so many years of the guy running head-on into solid things that by the time the hospital found him he was bleeding rust in some vacant lot. ~ Ken Kesey

As a kid, I played my share of football in the street or in a vacant lot. ~ Barry Sanders

It was awful. It was three in the morning. And I finally said, "Chip, I'm not sleeping in this house."

We were broke. We couldn't go to a hotel. There was no way we were gonna go knock on one of our parents' doors at that time of night.

That's when I got an idea. We happened to have Chip's parents' old RV parked in a vacant lot a few blocks down. We had some of our things in there and had been using it basically as a storage unit until we moved in. "Let's get in the RV. We'll go find somewhere to plug it in, and we'll have AC," I said.
As we stepped outside, the skies opened up. It started pouring rain. When we finally got into the RV, soaking wet, we pulled down the road a ways and Chip said, "I know where we can go." It was raining so hard we could barely see through the windshield, and all of a sudden Chip turned the RV into a cemetery.
"Why are you pulling in to a cemetery?" I asked him.
"We're not going to the cemetery," Chip said. "It's just next to a cemetery. There's an RV park back here."
"Are you kidding me? Could this get any worse?"
"Oh, quit it. You're going to love it once I get this AC fired up."
Chip decided to go flying through the median between the two rows of RV parking, not realizing it was set up like a culvert for drainage and rain runoff. That RV bounced so hard that, had it not been for our seat belts, we would've both been catapulted through the roof of that vehicle.
"What was that?!"
"I ~ Joanna Gaines

The prescription for spiritual transformation has often been too individualistically oriented. We are encouraged to engage in spiritual disciplines so that we might have the power to do what we can't do by will power alone. But what happens when people don't have the "will power" to engage spiritual disciples on a consistent basis? Our character is left untended. "In a wild world like ours, your character, left untended, will become a stale room, an obnoxious child, a vacant lot filled with thorns, weeds, broken bottles, raggedy grocery bags, and dog droppings. Your deepest channels will silt in, and you will feel yourself shallowing. You'll become a presence neither you nor others will enjoy, and you and they will spend more and more time and energy trying to be anywhere else."[1] So what are we to do? ~ J.R. Woodward

Doc awakened very slowly and clumsily like a fat man getting out of a swimming pool. His mind broke the surface and fell back several times. There was red lipstick on his beard. He opened one eye, saw the brilliant colors of the quilt and closed his eye quickly. But after a while he looked again. His eye went past the quilt to the floor, to the broken plate in the corner, to the glasses standing on the table turned over on the floor, to the spilled wine and the books like heavy fallen butterflies. There were little bits of curled red paper all over the place and the sharp smell of firecrackers. He could see through the kitchen door to the steak plates stacked high and the skillets deep in grease. Hundreds of cigarette butts were stamped out on the floor. And under the firecracker smell was a fine combination of wine and whiskey perfume. His eye stopped for a moment on a little pile of hairpins in the middle of the floor.
He rolled over slowly and supporting himself on one elbow he looked out the broken window. Cannery Row was quiet and sunny. The boiler was open. The door of the Palace Flophouse was closed. A man slept peacefully among the weeds in the vacant lot. The Bear Flag was shut up tight. ~ John Steinbeck

There's hundreds of corners on this island, Crystal said. And there are thousands of us. Exiles from the heartland without a heart. Out of the old country, a brand-new tribe, dancing to new tunes around a bucket of fire in a vacant lot. ~ Tom Spanbauer

Amazing how he could make her feel. Safe in a vacant lot, warm in the middle of the night. Just being this close to him, being able to touch his thoughts and feel his presence, was comforting-and dizzying. ~ L.J.Smith

I am in this same river. I can't much help it. I admit it: I'm racist. The other night I saw a group (or maybe a pack?) or white teenagers standing in a vacant lot, clustered around a 4x4, and I crossed the street to avoid them; had they been black, I probably would have taken another street entirely. And I'm misogynistic. I admit that, too. I'm a shitty cook, and a worse house cleaner, probably in great measure because I've internalized the notion that these are woman's work. Of course, I never admit that's why I don't do them: I always say I just don't much enjoy those activities (which is true enough; and it's true enough also that many women don't enjoy them either), and in any case, I've got better things to do, like write books and teach classes where I feel morally superior to pimps. And naturally I value money over life. Why else would I own a computer with a hard drive put together in Thailand by women dying of job-induced cancer? Why else would I own shirts mad in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, and shoes put together in Mexico? The truth is that, although many of my best friends are people of color (as the cliche goes), and other of my best friends are women, I am part of this river: I benefit from the exploitation of others, and I do not much want to sacrifice this privilege. I am, after all, civilized, and have gained a taste for "comforts and elegancies" which can be gained only through the coercion of slavery. The truth is that like most others who benefit from this ~ Derrick Jensen

When I was a boy, I had a baseball team of my own. We played on a vacant lot between Ninetieth and Ninety-second streets. I had a little menagerie of my own, some pigeons, guinea pigs, and so on. On Saturday mornings, I had to take my music lesson. Then the members of my team used to come see my menagerie. ~ Jacob Ruppert

For five weeks, the Associated Press had provided the world with lurid coverage of the attack on Virgil Earp, which was labeled Cow Boy revenge for what was being called "the Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" because it took too long to set the type for "Gunfight in the Vacant Lot behind Camillus Fly's Photography Studio Near Fremont Street. ~ Mary Doria Russell

In the Middle East in the summertime, to keep cool, a lot of people sleep on the rooftops. ~ Daron Malakian

I didn't know what the path was that I wanted to be as an actor, to be honest. I've been doing a lot of theater since I was a kid, so I was just sort of taking opportunities. ~ Guy Pearce

He reached out, opened the glove compartment, and took out a gun. It was a Smith & Wesson .38 five-shot special. It looked a lot like my gun.
"I stopped by your apartment this morning and picked this up for you," Ranger said. "I found it in the cookie jar."
"Tough guys always keep their gun in the cookie jar."
"Name one."
"Rockford."
Ranger grinned. "I stand corrected. ~ Janet Evanovich

I've met a lot of right men ... but it seems as if it's the wrong man that I'm attracted to. ~ Jane Harvey-Berrick

Choose what information you listen to. Place a filter over your eyes and ears and only allow in things that won't bring you down, because we have our day-to-day life to do that. Do you think I don't get judged and criticized at work? Well, I do - a lot! But I've decided to hear only the things that encourage me to improve, the things that help me correct my mistakes. Otherwise, I will just pretend ~ Paulo Coelho

Half the people in the world are below average. That's the definition of average and explains the behaviour of a lot of people. ~ Robert Popple

I hear the chipper voice of the Church magazines chirping in my brain: You're in a relationship with a boy who treats you as his emotional and spiritual equal. You feel a desire to express your affection through physical acts that will bring mutual pleasure. Do you (a) go for it! Sex is a natural gift from God, and a lot of fun so long as you do it safely!; (b) get him to propose! Sex is only fun if you do it in a Church of America-approved union! Plus, babies are so cute!; or (c) seek guidance from your local pastor for your sinful thoughts and ask for tips on expressing your love in a holy, nonphysical way? TRICK QUESTION! The answer is (d) the fact that you even momentarily considered having sex out of wedlock proves that you have no place in God's eternal kingdom, you reprehensible slut. ~ Katie Coyle

I kept saying that I'd never live in L.A., and I didn't think I would. But that's where the work is, and I ended up making a lot of friends there, and my old friends moved out to Los Angeles too. And also, I think when you're famous, its hard to live in a small town. ~ John Cusack

I've always known a lot of very bad people, destructive, brutes of a certain kind. Then I've seen these lovely impulses and what not, and they've stayed with me and comforted me. ~ Paula Fox

It's like a lot of kids; when you tell them someone's died, they laugh. ~ Paul McCartney

That fighting of a battle without belief is, I think, the sorriest task which ever falls to the lot of any man. ~ Anthony Trollope

A lot of blood,
A lot of dead people,
A lot of victims,
A lot of useless battles,
A lot of predictable battles, so far what's next?

As far as now I suggest to change the road, it's too messy this road in which all are walking. Somebody will fall... ~ Deyth Banger

There is a lot of hype about drama school, I think. ~ Eleanor Tomlinson

I find a lot of really hot people to be extremely boring because they haven't had to work at it. ~ Drew Barrymore

I believe in the complexity of the human story and that there's no way you can tell that story in one way and say, This is it. Always there will be someone who can tell it differently depending on where they are standing; the same person telling the story will tell it differently. I think of that masquerade in Igbo festivals that dances in the public arena. The Igbo people say, If you want to see it well, you must not stand in one place. The masquerade is moving through this big arena. Dancing. If you're rooted to a spot, you miss a lot of the grace. So you keep moving, and this is the way I think the world's stories should be told - from many different perspectives. ~ Chinua Achebe

Your manager wants to believe that you enjoy your job, or at least you won't spit in her coffee when she looks away. At the office, attitude counts for a lot. ~ Terri Tierney Clark

You got to have dedicated people, a lot of dedicated folk. There's only so much one person can do. We really have to find people in our community that can give an hour a week. I was recruited because I started gangbanging at 12. I understand the structure; I understand the people inside. ~ Malik Yusef

I don't get to be edgy and angry, but the rewards are that I'm generally quite happy with my day. I spend an awful lot of time in a good mood. ~ Raul Esparza

I keep a lot of my old baseball hats, and if you look in the hats I've had since I started pitching, you'll see 'Philippians 4:13' written on the brim. That's the Scripture that gets me through the day because sometimes you can't do it all by yourself. You can't do it on your own, so you lean on Him. ~ Scotty McCreery

Whatever you do, remember that. You're going to make a difference. A lot of times it won't be huge, it won't be visible even. But it will matter just the same. Don't do it for praise or money, that's what I want to tell you. Do it because it needs to be done. Do it to make your world better. ~ Ed Brubaker

It's for all the women who embrace my aesthetic, but can't afford a Vera Wang dress. If women can get anything out of it - a little bit of me or a lot of me, that's what's important. ~ Vera Wang

You know, I go around the country a lot. ~ Sally Ride

So what's your story?" Maddie didn't try to hide the singsong lilt of her voice as she spoke. She didn't want to. She'd learned at a very young age that nothing annoyed manly men more than girly girls, and if Maddie had one talent, it was truly exceptional girliness.
"Shut up and be quiet," Stefan snapped.
"That's just a tad redundant, FYI."
"Shut up!" he hissed near her ear.
Maddie couldn't help but shift her weight from foot to foot, almost pacing in place. She was careful of the ice and the snow, though. No use falling to the ground and having Stefan accidentally pull the trigger.
"You really do give a lot of orders," she told him.
He tightened his grip. "I'm the one with the gun."
"Well, yeah. Sure. Technically. But I'm the one with the winning personality, and that should count for something."
"You should be scared," he said in the same tone a movie villain might use to say You should be dead when the hero materializes five years later, hungry for vengeance.
Stefan was confused, and Maddie couldn't blame him.
So she turned back and shrugged. "Maybe. But I don't think you're a bad guy."
He let her go and spun her around, grabbing Logan's unzipped coat and pulling her closer.
"I. Have. The. Gun," he reminded her.
Maddie smiled and pulled away. "And I have Taylor Swift's signature scent. Doesn't make me a pop star. It just makes me smell like Taylor Swift, which isn't as great as it sounds because, to a bear, ~ Ally Carter

An anti-hero is just a villain you spend a lot of time with. ~ Matthew Catania

I suffer from ADDAD ... Attention Deficit Doing ANYTHING Disorder!
It's where you set a goal to do certain things, then you start to do one thing, but get distracted by other things, which causes you to bounce around from thing to thing only to end up doing a lot of things with nothing to show for it!! ~ Tanya Masse

I love animals. When I was young, I had two St. Bernards, I still have a dog, I have a lot of cats in my company. My wife always says, "You spend a lot of money on animals. More than even me!" ~ Jackie Chan

A lot of the friends I had went on to become criminals. ~ Joel Kinnaman

A lot of people understand what not saying anything means, so, in effect, not saying anything is really saying a lot. ~ Bill Walton

I got into reading a lot of noir and a lot of thrillers as well, and I really admired the plotting about those and the way that they can surprise you. And obviously to surprise people and to have twists in the tale, you have to plan quite carefully. ~ Joe Abercrombie

A lot of artists write about the same things their whole career. ~ Win Butler