Quotes & Sayings About Palm Trees

I suddenly realized I was in California. Warm, palmy air - air you can kiss - and palms. — Jack Kerouac

I felt him there with me. The real David. My David.
David, you are still here. Alive. Alive in me.
Alive in the galaxy.
Alive in the stars.
Alive in the sky.
Alive in the sea.
Alive in the palm trees.
Alive in feathers.
Alive in birds.
Alive in the mountains.
Alive in the coyotes.
Alive in books.
Alive in sound.
Alive in mom.
Alive in dad.
Alive in Bobby.
Alive in me.
Alive in soil.
Alive in branches.
Alive in fossils.
Alive in tongues.
Alive in eyes.
Alive in cries.
Alive in bodies.
Alive in past, present and future.
Alive forever. — Kelly Easton

L.A.: where there's never weather, and walking is a crime. L.A.: where the streetlights and palm trees go on forever, where darkness never comes, like a deal that never goes down, a meeting that's never taken. The City of Angels: where every cockroach has a screenplay and even the winos wear roller skates. It's that kind of town. — Ian Shoales

How vainly men themselves amaze To win the palm, the oak, or bays; And their uncessant labours see Crown'd from some single herb or tree. Whose short and narrow verged shade Does prudently their toils upbraid; While all flow'rs and all trees do close To weave the garlands of repose. — Andrew Marvell

How, I wonder, staring out my hotel window into black nothingness, can Icelanders possibly be happy living under this veil of darkness? I've always associated happy places with palm trees and beaches and blue drinks and, of course, swim-up bars. That's paradise, right? The global travel industry certainly wants us to think so. Bliss, the ads tell us, lies someplace else, and that someplace else is sunny and eighty degrees. Always. Our language, too, reflects the palm-tree bias. Happy people have a sunny disposition and always look on the bright side of life. Unhappy people possess dark souls and black bile. — Eric Weiner

Of all trees , I observe God hath chosen the vine, a low plant that creeps upon the helpful wall; of all beasts, the soft and patient lamb; of all fowls, the mild and guileless dove . Christ is the rose of the field, and the lily of the valley. When God appeared to Moses , it was not in the lofty cedar nor the sturdy oak nor the spreading palm; but in a bush, a humble, slender, abject shrub; as if He would, by these elections, check the conceited arrogance of man. — Owen Feltham

The need for a garden of rare palms and vines and ornamental trees and shrubs which would be near enough to a growing city to form a quiet place where children with their elders could peer, as it were, into those fascinating jungles and palm glades of the tropics which have for generations stimulated the imaginations of American youth. — David Fairchild

Making a Fist
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern
past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
"How do you know if you are going to die?"
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
"When you can no longer make a fist."
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand. — Naomi Shihab Nye

I reached down to feel the soil, and I touched the outreaching roots of the trees that bore horizontally and vertically hundreds of feet through the forest. I stroked the earth with my palm, and I could almost feel that invisible network of capillary roots that sucks moisture and nutrients out of every inch of the soil I was standing on. I breathed in and out. I was part of the forest. I was alive. — Ned Hayes

December 1931 was drawing to a close and Hollywood was aglow with Christmas spirit, undaunted by sizzling sunshine, palm trees, and the dry encircling hills that would never feel the kiss of snow. But the "Know-how" that would transform the Chaplin studio in the frozen Chilkoot Pass could easily achieve a white Christmas. In Wilson's Rolls-Royce convertible, we drove past Christmas trees heavy with fake snow. An entire estate on Fairfax Avenue had been draped in cotton batting; carolers straight out of Dickens were at its gate, perspiring under mufflers and greatcoats. The street signs on Hollywood Boulevard had been changed to Santa Claus Lane. They drooped with heavy glass icicles. A parade was led by a band blaring out "Santa Claus is Coming to Town," followed by Santa driving a sleigh. But Hollywood granted Santa the extra dimension of a Sweetheart and seated beside him was Clara Bow (or was it Mabel Normand?) — Anita Loos

My grandfather gave me my first guitar, an old acoustic with palm trees and dancing girls painted on it. — Dan Fogelberg

God, she was beautiful - my first image of the Orient - a woman such as only the desert poet knew how to praise: her face was the sun, her hair the protecting shadow, her eyes fountains of cool water, her body the most slender of palm-trees and her smile a mirage. — Amin Maalouf

These palm trees like my old homeboys, hella shady — Chamillionaire

Earlier that day I had found a sheet of paper on which Min's grandmother had written her definition of the "superior woman." At the top of the page is said, "Formula for Woman, According to Dignity." The formula was "Has excellent posture, which is two-thirds contentment and one-third desire."
At first I thought this a bit arbitrary. But all day the idea had been passing through my mind like a mantra. I began to think, in this strange place - half kingdom, half city - that the grandmother's formula caught the entire world in its tiny palm. Two-thirds contentment, one-third desire. Of course, I thought, as I spiraled my way through the trees to Asia Foodstore, that is the composition of the world. — Rebecca Lee

I'm a sucker for turquoise sea, white beaches and palm trees. I've been to the tropics every year since I could afford it. It's the perfect place to unwind. I can chill out, read, do a bit of yoga. — Bruno Tonioli

I was in Cancun, Mexico, sitting in a disappearing-edge swimming pool, on a bar stool that was actually under the water, watching palm trees sway in a sultry breeze against the unmistakable aqua splendor of the Caribbean Sea; drinking coconut, lime, and tequila from a scooped-out pineapple, with salt spray of breaking surf and sun kissing my skin.
Translation: I'd died and gone to heaven. — Karen Marie Moning

And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes.
"Oh, shut up and get something to read," George said. He was reading again.
His wife was looking out of the window. It was quite dark now and still raining in the palm trees. "Anyway, I want a cat," she said. "I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can't have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat." George was not listening. He was reading his book. His wife looked out of the window where the light had come on in the square. — Ernest Hemingway,

He knows how it is to leave Ireland, did it himself and never got over it. You live in Los Angeles with sun and palm trees day in day out and you ask God if there's any chance He could give you one soft rainy Limerick day — Frank McCourt

The two palm worms are brought in separate bowls, still alive, wriggling fiercely in a bath of turpentine-colored fish sauce with a few slivers of chili. The glossy brown heads of the grubs, the larvae of a weevil that infests palm trees, glisten like popcorn seeds; the wriggling abdomens have pale rubbery ridges. The owner of the restaurant, chubby and affable, comes out to instruct Nhat and me: we are to grasp the heads, pull off the fat white bodies with our teeth, and discard the heads, taking care that the larvae do not nip our tongues with their formidable pincers in the process. Biting down on squirming larvae seems barbaric, but my brain is starting to swim due to hunger, and the fish sauce is muskily aromatic. How bad could their fat glistening bodies taste? And am I not a direct descendant of insectivores, albeit roughly 100 million years removed? I — Stephen Le

So fuck you, Los Angeles, fuck your palm trees, and your highassed women, and your fancy streets, for I am going home, back to Colorado, back to the best damned town in the USA - Boulder, Colorado. — John Fante

There were only two men on the planet better educated in the various martial arts than Butler, and he was related to one of them. The other lived on an island in the South China Sea, and spent his days meditating and beating up palm trees. You had to feel sorry for the B'wa Kell. — Eoin Colfer

In English and Arabic. Clearly, even personal shoppers had him pegged as a complete geek. The shopper also managed to find some supplies for our magic bags - blocks of wax, twine, even some papyrus and ink - though I doubt Bes explained to her what they were for. After she left, Bes, Carter and I ordered more food from room service. We sat on the deck and watched the afternoon go by. The breeze from the Mediterranean was cool and pleasant. Modern Alexandria stretched out to our left - an odd mix of gleaming high-rises, shabby, crumbling buildings, and ancient ruins. The shoreline highway was dotted with palm trees and crowded with every sort of vehicle from BMWs to donkeys. From our penthouse suite, it all seemed a bit unreal - the raw energy of the city, the bustle and congestion below - while we sat on our veranda in the sky eating fresh fruit and the last melting bits of Lenin's head. — Rick Riordan

While they are busy showing off, digging other people's graves, hanging themselves on a cross, running wild in the streets, cherries are quietly turning from green to red, oysters are suffering pearls, and children are catching rain in their mouths expecting the drops to be cold but they're not; they are warm and smell like pineapple before they get heavier and heavier, so heavy and fast they can't be caught one at a time. Poor swimmers head for shore while strong ones wait for lightning's silver veins. Bottle-green clouds sweep in, pushing the rain inland where palm trees pretend to be shocked by the wind. — Toni Morrison

I love touring in the United States. It's dramatically different wherever you go. North to south, you're going from snow to palm trees. — Greg Lake

What's this?" Dan said, pointing to a funny squiggly formation.
Uh, an M," said Nellie. "Or if you look at it the other way, a W. Or sideways, kind of S-ish..."
Maybe it's palm trees," Dan said. "Like in the movie It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. You know? No? These guys need to find hidden money, and the only clue they have is it's under a big W? And no one sees what it means-but then, near the end of the movie, there's this grove of four palm trees rising up in the shape of... you-know-what! Classic!"
Amy, Alistair, Natalie, Ian and Nellie all looked at him blankly.
There is no W in the Korean language," Alistair replied. "Or palm trees in Korea. I might be maple trees..."
Mrrp," said Saladin, rubbing his face against Dan's knee.
I'll tell you the rest of the plot later," Dan whispered to the Mau. — Peter Lerangis

In the year 2007, seals, otters, lions, turtles, frogs, apes, snakes, butterflies, polar bears, cheetahs, whales are disappearing along with their variously furnished homes: cloud forests, rain forests, ice pack, boreal forests, coral reefs, forests of deciduous trees, conifer and palm. — Eban Goodstein

If you're wired a certain way, you'll always be in morion, clicking to your own rhythm, all of it in four-four time, avoiding convention and predictability and control as you would a sickness, the whole world waiting for you like an enormous dance pavilion lit by colored lights and surrounded with palm trees. I'm not talking about the dirty boogie. The music of the spheres is right outside your bedroom window. — James Lee Burke

I'd sit around dreaming that the boys I saw at shows or at work - the boys with silver earrings and big boots - would tell me I was beautiful, take me home and feed me Thai food or omelets and undress me and make love to me all night with the palm trees whispering windsongs about a tortured gleaming city and the moonlight like flame melting our candle bodies. — Francesca Lia Block

Before a dream is realized, the Soul of the World tests everything that was learned along the way. It does this not because it is evil, but so that we can, in addition to realizing our dreams, master the lessons we've learned as we've moved toward that dream. That's the point at which most people give up. It's the point at which, as we say in the language of the desert, one 'dies of thirst just when the palm trees have appeared on the horizon. — Paulo Coelho

They all went down in droves because just scenes of palm trees and beaches can get pretty boring. — James MacArthur

How do I begin to explain? It's because. Because I feel responsible. Because she's a little girl with big green eyes that blink too often when she gets excited. Because she has this big dream about Florida, where she thinks she'll find her mother, like the whole state is Disney World, nothing but palm trees and happiness. Because she misses her mother with a longing as big as the state. Because I've been blessed to have so much love in my life. — Ute Carbone

The desert came into view ... sand and palm trees, a way of life that revolved around human beings without possessions or skills, who had to rely on their imaginations to contrive a way of making their hearts beat faster or even to keep them at a normal pace; to search unaided for a hidden gleam of light, and to live with two seasons a year instead of four. — Hanan Al-Shaykh

California to me as a concept or as an idea always seems like endless optimism and endless opportunity - when people think of California they think of palm trees and blue skies and gorgeous sunsets and beaches and everything else. — Mark Hoppus

I have often asked myself, "What did the Easter Islander who cut down the last palm tree say while he was doing it?" Like modern loggers, did he shout "Jobs, not trees!"? Or: "Technology will solve our problems, never fear, we'll find a substitute for wood"? Or: "We don't have proof that there aren't palms somewhere else on Easter, we need more research, your proposed ban on logging is premature and driven by fear-mongering"? Similar questions arise for every society that has inadvertently damaged its environment. — Jared Diamond

The palm trees on the median swayed and bent, threatening to snap. But they wouldn't. They were strong enough to take it.

And so was I. — Michelle Hodkin

Fatima went back to her tent, and, when daylight came, she went out to do the chores she had done for years. But everything had changed. The boy was no longer at the oasis, and the oasis would never again have the same meaning it had had only yesterday. It would no longer be a place with fifty thousand palm trees and three hundred wells, where the pilgrims arrived, relieved at the end of their long journeys. From that day on, the oasis would be an empty place for her.
From that day on, it was the desert that would be important. She would look to it everyday, and would try to guess which star the boy was following in search of his treasure. She would have to send her kisses on the wind, hoping that the wind would touch the boy's face, and would tell him that she was alive. That she was waiting for him, a woman awaiting a courageous man in search of his treasure. From that day on, the desert would represent only one thing to her: the hope for his return. — Paulo Coelho

I expected palm trees and red carpets, said Iko, brow drawn in a show of severe disappointment. — Marissa Meyer

The desired Islamic state might be likened to an orchard planted with olive and palm trees that will take a relatively long time to produce fruit. — Yusuf Al-Qaradawi

bosh," he finally said. "Ook-la. Palm trees — Jonathan Kellerman

Yellow melon flowers Crawl beneath the withered peach-trees; A date-palm throws its heavy fronds of steel Against the scoured metallic sky. — John Gould Fletcher

Lights are glowing in the palm trees ... — Jimmy Buffett

The dance of the palm trees, the oceans calling, the first rays of sun and heaven is here. — Michael Dolan

Control.... is not what we need.
What we need is to bend to the tempest like pine and palm trees - flexible, adaptive, attuned, yet fully rooted in our principles. — Patricia Pearson

Winter denial: therein lay the key to California Schadenfreude
the secret joy that the rest of the country feels at the misfortune of California. The country said: "Look at them, with their fitness and their tans, their beaches and their movie stars, their Silicon Valley and silicone breasts, their orange bridge and their palm trees. God, I hate those smug, sunshiny bastards!" Because if you're up to your navel in a snowdrift in Ohio, nothing warms your heart like the sight of California on fire. If you're shoveling silt out of your basement in the Fargo flood zone, nothing brightens your day like watching a Malibu mansion tumbling down a cliff into the sea. And if a tornado just peppered the land around your Oklahoma town with random trailer trash and redneck nuggets, then you can find a quantum of solace in the fact that the earth actually opened up in the San Fernando Valley and swallowed a whole caravan of commuting SUVs. — Christopher Moore

My favorite thing to do in L.A. is to be in a car with friends listening to music. The perfect time is twilight, when the setting sun is filtering through the palm trees. Back in the day, we'd be listening to the Vandals, X, or Farside. Now it would be L.A.-based bands like Dum Dum Girls, Foxygen, or Ty Segall. — Liz Goldwyn

Palm trees are all right only in mirages. — Vladimir Nabokov

Most of the American films were made in southern California, so if you were in Europe, watching those palm trees swaying in the wind with someone like Rita Hayworth gliding underneath them in a white convertible, you got all kinds of wonderfully wrong ideas about the place. — Charles Simic

If you've 'eard the East a-callin', why you won't 'eed nothin' else.
No! you won't 'eed nothin' else, but them spicy garlic smells, an' the sunshine an' the palm trees, an' the tinkly temple-bells. — Rudyard Kipling

Hollywood is Newark, New Jersey with palm trees. — Weegee

A lot of parts of L.A. are interchangeable with suburbs in Joburg. Very big, ostentatious houses with palm trees and lawns. Lawns are very important. Never underestimate lawns. — Neill Blomkamp

The man stood alone by the hive. On impulse he put his palm against the wood, as if feeling for a pulse. — Laline Paull

The marquess lifted his palm to her, a man held in wind-tousled grace, waiting; still as the eye of a tempest was still, inexorable force only momentarily at bay. The heels of his shoes rested at the very, very edge of the rooftop. If the wind changed, if he lost his balance-
Beyond him were only trees and sky, the dark-misted storm sweeping emerald hills up to heaven.
"You are mad," Rue said again, but she found herself moving toward him. His fingers closed over hers; he raised her hand to his mouth and held it there, warming her skin with his.
"I prefer the word dashing.'
She huffed a breath, almost a laugh.
"Oh, and one more thing." Above their locked fingers he granted her a new smile, this one slow and blazingly sensual. "Little brown-haired girl ... I did notice you."
He Turned to smoke.
-Rue & Kit — Shana Abe

So I went up north to a land of palm trees and mangroves like malignant growths in the mud-filled throats of the bays, and orange trees with their leaves accepting darkly and seriously, in their own house as it were, the unwarranted globular outbursts of winter flame; and the sky faultless and remote. — Janet Frame

Sleepy pulled the car to a stop in front of this paved entranceway, which was flanked on either side by these enormous palm trees, kind of like the Polynesian Resort at Disney World. In fact, the whole place had kind of a Disney feel to it. You know, really big, and kind of modern and fake. — Meg Cabot

Even though it was January, in Los Angeles it was beautiful and sunny and the blue skies were out and it was hot everyday, so I think it was just a product of our environment. And California to me as a concept or as an idea always seems like endless optimism and endless opportunity - when people think of California they think of palm trees and blue skies and gorgeous sunsets and beaches and everything else. But there's also this weirdness to California, this darkness, it's a place where people come to follow their dreams and sometimes don't make it. — Mark Hoppus

Cruising down Sunset Boulevard with the Cramps blasting and palm trees silhouetted by the neon signs of strip clubs can sometimes repair the worst of moods. — Sophia Amoruso

My favorite place to be is by the bay where the palm trees sway. — Janet Toole Lewis

For me exotic means beaches, palm trees and sand and frolicking in the ocean — Priyanka Chopra

how many ghosts I was going to encounter. That Serra guy had to have a bunch of Native Americans mad at him - particularly considering that corporal punishment thing - and I hadn't any doubt I was going to encounter all of them. And yet, when my mom and I walked through the school's wide front archway into the courtyard around which the Mission had been constructed, I didn't see a single person who looked as if he or she didn't belong there. There were a few tourists snapping pictures of the impressive fountain, a gardener working diligently at the base of a palm tree - even at my new school there were palm trees - a priest walking in silent contemplation down the airy breezeway. It was a beautiful, restful place - especially for a building that was so old and had to have seen so much death. I couldn't understand it. Where were all the ghosts? Maybe they were afraid to hang around the place. I was a little afraid, looking up at that crucifix. — Meg Cabot

Some beach, somewhere. There's a big umbrella casting shade over an empty chair. Palm trees are growin' and a warm breeze a blowing. I picture myself right there, on some beach, somewhere. — Blake Shelton

It had pale golden sands and clear cloudless blue skies. Rich quantities of palm trees and exotic flowers in dramatic red and fuchsia pink and bright yellow colors enhanced the islands beauty. The gardens were decorated with white Balinese furniture and the Japanese rock gardens with mythical dragons, lions, dinosaurs, elephants, nymphs, and man beasts (half men and half beast) in concrete large statutes and red bridges over goldfish ponds. A large loch housed swans and pink flamingos. — Annette J. Dunlea

Leave me in Granada in the middle of paradise where my soul wells with poetry;
Leave me until my time comes and I may intone a fitting song.
Yes, I want my memorial stone in this land.
Granada! Holy place of the glory of Spain,
Your mountains are the white tents of pavilions,
Your walls are the circle of a vase of flowers,
Your plain a Moorish shawl embroidered with colour,
Your towers are palm trees that imprison you — Jose Zorrilla

Miami is just really fun whenever I go there. It's like this post-apocalyptic Barbie world: everything is pink, and there're palm trees everywhere. But then there are also all these people in crazy sunglasses, warehouses with sick parties where all the girls are covered in spikes and black leather. It's a very weird place. — Grimes

Los Angeles, the sun shines a lot, and it's blue, and there's palm trees; it's a bit like Sydney, I guess, but the underbelly is a vicious, mean, cruel, awful place. — Loudon Wainwright III

While in college, I used to get my ideas from photographs in 'National Geographic.' I started painting palm trees and motorboats. — Peter Saul

Somewhere, far, far away, there's a shitty island. An island without a name. An island not worth giving a name. A shitty island with a shitty shape. On this shitty island grow palm trees that also have shitty shapes. And the palm trees produce coconuts that give off a shitty smell. Shitty monkeys live in the trees, and they love to eat these shitty-smelling coconuts, after which they shit the world's foulest shit. The shit falls on the ground and builds up shitty mounds, making the shitty palm trees that grown on them even shittier. It's an endless cycle. — Haruki Murakami

A true thing about seeds is that they don't always stay seeds. In addition, most seeds grow up to be something. Some become plants or trees that then go about producing more seeds. Some seeds get popped and eaten and ... well, you probably have a pretty good idea of what happens to things after they get eaten.
Some seeds are dried, some are pressed for oil, and some simply end up in bean bags or as the rattle in a baby's toy. It's probably fair to say that the life and times of a seed isn't necessarily the most exciting thing in the world, but what the seed lacks in excitement, it makes up for in miracles.
It's a miracle that a tiny seed can change from a dot in your palm into a towering tree whose wood can be made into the home you live in or the paper books are printed on. — Obert Skye

The truck blasts through the trees and I stick my hand out the window, trying to catch the wind in my palm like bails used to, missing her, missing the girl I used to be around her, missing who we all used to be. We will never be those people again. She took them all with her. — Jandy Nelson

But the thing I remember most about the screening in October twenty years ago was the moment Julian grasped my hand that had gone numb on the armrest separating our seats. He did this because in the book Julian Wells lived but in the movie's new scenario he had to die. He had to be punished for all of his sins. That's what the movie demanded. (Later, as a screenwriter, I learned it's what all movies demanded.) When this scene occurred, in the last ten minutes, Julian looked at me in the darkness, stunned. "I died," he whispered. "They killed me off." I waited a bit before sighing, "But you're still here." Julian turned back to the screen and soon the movie ended, the credits rolling over the palm trees as I (improbably) take Blair back to my college while Roy Orbison wails a song about how life fades away. — Bret Easton Ellis

The film festival measured a mile in length, from the Martinez to the Vieux Port, where sales executives tucked into their platters of fruits de mer, but was only fifty yards deep. For a fortnight the Croisette and its grand hotels willingly became a facade, the largest stage set in the world. Without realizing it, the crowds under the palm trees were extras recruited to play their traditional roles. As they cheered and hooted, they were far more confident than the film actors on display, who seemed ill at ease when they stepped from their limos, like celebrity criminals ferried to a mass trial by jury at the Palais, a full-scale cultural Nuremberg furnished with film clips of the atrocities they had helped to commit. — J.G. Ballard

Jessica stopped a few feet away so that Ken could get an optimal view of her body posed against the seductive backdrop of the sea, sand, and palm trees. — Francine Pascal

My homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air;
no bird here can sing as well
as the birds sing over there.

We have fields more full of flowers
and a starrier sky above,
we have woods more full of life
and a life more full of love.

Lonely night-time meditations
please me more when I am there;
my homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air.

Such delights as my land offers
Are not found here nor elsewhere;
lonely night-time meditations
please me more when I am there;
My homeland has many palm-trees
and the thrush-song fills its air.

Don't allow me, God, to die
without getting back to where
I belong, without enjoying
the delights found only there,
without seeing all those palm-trees,
hearing thrush-songs fill the air. — Goncalves Dias

Receive this cross of ash upon your brow
Brought from the burning of Palm Sunday's cross;
The forests of the world are burning now
And you make late repentance for the loss.
But all the trees of God would clap their hands,
The very stones themselves would shout and sing,
If you could covenant to love these lands
And recognize in Christ their lord and king.
He sees the slow destruction of those trees,
He weeps to see the ancient places burn,
And still you make what purchases you please
And still to dust and ashes you return.
But Hope could rise from ashes even now
Beginning with this sign upon your brow. — Malcolm Guite

Let's see if I can synopsize our situation," he said. "I never give interviews. You want an interview. No, strike that. You need an interview, because the rabid jackal you work for has made it clear your job is on the line. Am I close?"
The sizzle receded to a tingle. "You're in the ballpark."
"I'm not just in the ballpark, babe. I'm Josh Beckett on the mound at Fenway. If I don't give you what you need, you're hiding behind palm trees waiting for drunk pop stars to pop out of their Wonderbras."
And that pretty much killed the last of the lingering tingle. "Payback's a bitch and all that, right, Joe?"
The dimples flashed. "Isn't it? — Shannon Stacey

Below me, clusters of palm trees were painted green-gold. Tousled by the wind, their fronds resembled tangles of unspooled cassette tape. — Louisa Hall

The first rule of hurricane coverage is that every broadcast must begin with palm trees bending in the wind. — Carl Hiaasen

could see people standing on the beach staring at the wave, immobilized, in a trance, as if they were watching a movie. They didn't think that what was happening in the ocean would reach the shore. Even if they ran as fast as they could, they wouldn't have been able to escape it. They were screening a new clip from Thailand or Indonesia. It showed a little boy climbing up the trunk of a tree as the tidal wave flattened the tall palm trees. "The earthquake started near the Sumatra Islands in Indonesia. — Dorit Sliverman

It sometimes takes a foreigner to come and see a place and paint it. I remember someone saying they had never really noticed the palm trees here until I painted them. — David Hockney

I wondered if I would appear on a temple wall painting someday. A blonde Egyptian girl with purple highlights running sideways through the palm trees, screaming "Yikes!" in hieroglyphics as Neith chased after me. The thought of some poor archaeologist trying to figure that out almost lifted my spirits. — Rick Riordan

A city where everyone seemed to live in a bungalow on a broad avenue lined with palm, pepper or eucalyptus trees, where there was never any snow. — Kevin Starr

Then she walked away, like Helen of Troy turning her back on Attica. A gust of warm wind blew newspapers along the boulevard into the sky. The light was orange and bleeding out of the clouds in the west, the horizon darkening, the waves crashing on the beach just the other side of Seawall Boulevard, the palm trees rattling dryly in the wind. I could smell the salt and the seaweed and the tiny shellfish that had dried on the beach, like the smell of birth. I — James Lee Burke

So there I was, sitting on the plane in a black leather motorcycle jacket, seeing these palm trees through the window as we landed. And I thought, Great. Black leather and palm trees. Already I'm fitting in, just like I knew I would ...
... Not. — Meg Cabot

Before you there lie the Steppes, my darling - only the Steppes, the naked Steppes, the Steppes that are as bare as the palm of my hand. There there live only heartless old women and rude peasants and drunkards. There the trees have already shed their leaves. There abide but rain and cold. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Have you heard the joke about the chemist, physicist and economist who get wrecked on a desert isle, with a huge supply of canned baked beans as their only food? The chemist says that he can start a fire using the neighbouring palm trees, and calculate the temperature at which a can will explode. The physicist says that she can work out the trajectory of each of the baked beans, so that they can be collected and eaten. The economist says Hang on guys, you're doing it the hard way. Let's assume we have a can opener. — Steve Keen

We stand there, quiet. My questions all seem wrong: How did you get so old? Was it all at once, in a day, or did you peter out bit by bit? When did you stop having parties? Did everyone else get old too, or was it just you? Are other people still here, hiding in the palm trees or holding their breath underwater? When did you last swim your laps? Do your bones hurt? Did you know this was coming and hide that you knew, or did it ambush you from behind? — Jennifer Egan

The trouble was, Elizabeth thought, they did not tell the children of colonial families not to love these foreign lands, not to fall in love with their birthplaces. While parents dreamt of retiring in peace to another place called 'home', their children soaked up knowledge of the only world they knew: its different peoples, its spicy food, its birdsong, the way warm rain fell like a curtain through the palm trees. Their souls would be forever torn. — Anne M. Chappel

Hyacinth bean and papayas, long vines, deep roots. Palm trees outside the garden walls, with deep roots, stand a thousand years. — Lisa See

There are cities that get by on their good looks, offer climate and scenery, views of mountains or oceans, rockbound or with palm trees; and there are cities like Detroit that have to work for a living, whose reason for being might be geographical but whose growth is based on industry, jobs. Detroit has its natural attractions: lakes all over the place, an abundance of trees and four distinct seasons for those who like variety in their weather, everything but hurricanes and earth-quakes. But it's never been the kind of city people visit and fall in love with because of its charm or think, gee, wouldn't this be a nice place to live. — Elmore Leonard

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. — Amos Tutuola

Relatively mild gusts of wind blow some trees down. Graceful palm trees, for example, are lovely to look at but will not stand up in a heavy wind because they are not well anchored. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

I'll be glad to leave here. I feel like eating palm trees. I don't like this place. It's for people with arthritis. They come here to play golf and to die. — Ernie Holmes

The sun is shining, mynah birds are chattering, palm trees are swaying, so what. I'm in the hospital and I'm healthy. My heart is beating as it should. My brain is firing off messages that are loud and clear. My wife is on the upright hospital bed, positioned the way people sleep on airplanes, her body stiff, head cocked to the side. Her hands on her lap. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

In the oasis complex, the thirsty man images he sees water, palm trees, and shade not because he has evidence for the belief, but because he has a need for it. Desperate needs bring about a hallucination of their solution: thirst hallucinates water, the need for love hallucinates a prince or princess. The oasis complex is never a complete delusion: the man in the desert does see something on the horizon. It is just that the palms have withered, the well is dry, and the place is infected with locusts. — Alain De Botton

Never was isle so little, never was sea so lone,
But over the scud and the palm-trees an English flag was flown. — Rudyard Kipling

Here I am," I say to the palm trees. "I can do this. Watch me. — Eileen Granfors

He saw the sun rise over forest and mountains and set over the distant palm shore. At night he saw the starts in the heavens and the sickle-shaped moon floating like a boat in the blue. He saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, rocks, weeds, flowers, brook and river, the sparkle of dew on bushes in the morning, distant high mountains blue and pale; birds sang, bees hummed, the wind blew gently across the rice fields. All this, colored and in a thousand different forms, had always been there. — Hermann Hesse

The sense of a small courageous community barely existing above the desert of trees, hemmed in by a sun too fierce to work under and a darkness filled with evil spirits - love was an arm round the neck, a cramped embrace in the smoke, wealth a little pile of palm-nuts, old age sores and leprosy, religion a few stones in the centre of the village where the dead chiefs lay, a grove of trees where the rice birds, like yellow and green canaries, built their nests, a man in a mask with raffia skirts dancing at burials. This never varied, only their kindness to strangers, the extent of their poverty and the immediacy of their terrors. Their laughter and their happiness seemed the most courageous things in nature — Graham Greene

Kandinski looked up. 'Do you read science fiction?' he asked matter-of-factly.
'Not as a rule,' Ward admitted. When Kandinski said nothing he went on: 'Perhaps I'm too skeptical, but I can't take it too seriously.'
Kandinski pulled at a blister on his palm. 'No one suggests you should. What you mean is that you take it too seriously.'
Accepting the rebuke with a smile at himself, Ward pulled out one of the magazines and sat down at a table next to Kandinski. On the cover was a placid suburban setting of snugly eaved houses, yew trees, and children's bicycles. Spreading slowly across the roof-tops was an enormous pulpy nightmare, blocking out the sun behind it and throwing a weird phosphorescent glow over the roofs and lawns. 'You're probably right,' Ward said, showing the cover to Kandinski. 'I'd hate to want to take that seriously.'
("The Venus Hunters") — J.G. Ballard

I will be your friend,' I said. 'I will go home to my mother's house the way I did when I skinned my knees as a little girl. I'll go and let myself be consoled by my roses, my palm trees, my enormous volcanoes in San Salvador. When you are old, maybe you'll come and see me someday. — Consuelo De Saint-Exupery

No one can walk beneath palm trees with impunity, and ideas are sure to change in a land where elephants and tigers are at home. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe