“I was a palm-wine drinkard since I was a boy of ten years of age. I had no other work more than to drink palm-wine in my life. - - - But when my father noticed that I could not do any work more than to drink, he engaged an expert palm-wine-tapster for me; he had no other work more than to tap palm-wine every day. So my father gave me a palm-tree farm which was nine miles square and it contained 560,000 palm-trees, and this palm-wine tapster was tapping one hundred and fifty kegs of palm-wine every morning, but before 2 o’clock p.m., I would have drunk it all; after that he would go and tap another 75 kegs.”

“Scientists say that the palm tree line, that is the climate suitable to growth of the palm, is moving north, five hundred metres, I think it was, every year...The palm tree line...I call it the coffee line, the strong black coffee line...It's rising like mercury in a thermometer, this palm tree line, this strong coffee line, this scandal line, rising up throughout Italy and already passed Rome...”

“Because he sounded so lost-the Eric I knew had never been one to do anything other than assume others should serve him-I patted around under the covers for his hand. When I found it, I slid my own over it. His palm was turned up to meet my palm, and his fingers clasped mine. And though I would not have thought it possible to go to sleep holding hands with a vampire, that's exactly what I did.”

“Where, then, is our orator running off to, who was going to speak about a palm, but talks of nothing but a gourd? "It started as a wine jar, why does it end as a water jug?”

“Mickey Cray had been out of work ever since a dead iguana fell from a palm tree and hit him on the head.”

“My homeland has many palm-treesand the thrush-song fills its air;no bird here can sing as wellas the birds sing over there.We have fields more full of flowersand a starrier sky above,we have woods more full of lifeand a life more full of love.Lonely night-time meditationsplease me more when I am there;my homeland has many palm-treesand the thrush-song fills its air.Such delights as my land offersAre not found here nor elsewhere;lonely night-time meditationsplease me more when I am there;My homeland has many palm-treesand the thrush-song fills its air.Don’t allow me, God, to diewithout getting back to whereI belong, without enjoyingthe delights found only there,without seeing all those palm-trees,hearing thrush-songs fill the air.”