A Quote by Grace Lee Boggs

When I came to Detroit, if you threw a stone up in the air it would hit an autoworker on its way down. A few years after that, if you threw a stone in the air it'd hit an abandoned house or a vacant lot on its way down. And most people saw those vacant lots as blight. But meanwhile during World War II, blacks had moved from the South to the North. And they saw these vacant lots as places where you could grow food for the community. And so urban agriculture was born.

Grace Lee Boggs

Quote Topics

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Quote Author

Grace Lee Boggs
American - Author
June 27, 1915 - October 5, 2015

When I came to Detroit, if you threw a stone up in the air and it came down, it would hit an autoworker because the Chrysler Jefferson plant where my husband worked was very close also to where we lived.

Grace Lee Boggs

Whatever art offered the men and women of previous eras, what it offers our own, it seems to me, is space - a certain breathing room for the spirit. The town I grew up in had many vacant lots; when I go back now, the vacant lots are gone. They were a luxury, just as tigers and rhinoceri, in the crowded world that is making, are luxuries. Museums and bookstores should feel, I think, like vacant lots - places where the demands on us are our own demands, where the spirit can find exercise in unsupervised play.

John Updike

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

Power-lust is a weed that grows only in the vacant lots of an abandoned mind.

Ayn Rand

Nakata's empty inside... Do you know what it means to be completely empty? Being empty is like a vacant house. An unlocked, vacant house. Anybody can come in, anytime they want. That's what scares me the most

Haruki Murakami

When I grew up, we played in vacant lots.

Archie Manning

i laced my shoes with sorrow and walked a weary road dead end streets don't come undone with double knots wing tipped shoes that walk on air through vacant lots

Saul Williams

The past, the future, majesty, love - if they are vacant of you, you are vacant of them.

Walt Whitman

I'm from Kansas, so there were a lot of vacant lots and open fields to tackle each other in so we could avoid tackling each other on the street. But running on the street and trying not to get taken down on the concrete, that will make you fast, that's for sure.

Barry Sanders

I wrote 'Big Yellow Taxi' on my first trip to Hawaii. I took a taxi to the hotel and when I woke up the next morning, I threw back the curtains and saw these beautiful green mountains in the distance. Then, I looked down and there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart this blight on paradise. That's when I sat down and wrote the song.

Joni Mitchell

There are no vacant lots in nature.

Edward Abbey

If you really want to go after something, you have to keep hammering at the stone whether or not the first hit or the 100th hit breaks the stone. You've got to believe that the stone is going to break.

Spencer Dinwiddie

Down at Bournemouth, I kicked a tray of cups up into air, and one hit Luther Blissett on the head. He flicked it on, and it went all over my suit hanging behind. Another time, at West Ham, I also threw a plate of sandwiches at Don Hutchison. He's sitting there, still arguing with me, with cheese and tomato running down his face.

Harry Redknapp

The professional arsonist builds vacant lots for money.

Jimmy Breslin

I saw a lot of good hitters but I never saw a better one than Paul Waner. I mean I once threw a side arm spitter right into his belly and he hit it into the upper deck.