Polly Adler

"I know myself well enough to be positive that I couldn't have lived through a whole year, or even a whole week, without finding something enjoyable about being alive, some-thing that made it more than just surviving. And if it might seem that I have got Polly Adler confused with Pollyanna, I can only say that I am one of those people who just can't help getting a kick out of life — even when it's a kick in the teeth."

"Harold was tops as a cavalier; every day he sent me more gardenias than most people go to the grave with."

"What it comes down to is this: the grocer, the butcher, the baker, the merchant, the landlord, the druggist, the liquor dealer, the policeman, the doctor, the city father and the politician – these are the people who make money out of prostitution, these are the real reapers of the wages of sin."

"The women who take husbands not out of love but out of greed, to get their bills paid, to get a fine house and clothes and jewels; the women who marry to get out of a tiresome job, or to get away from disagreeable relatives, or to avoid being called an old maid — these are whores in everything but name. The only difference between them and my girls is that my girls gave a man his money's worth."

"Your heart often knows things before your mind does, and I think from this time on, psychologically speaking, I was already retired from the business I had been in so long."

"I was just recalling the pet saying of an old madam named Vicki Shaw." "Oh? And what was that?" "Too many cooks," I said glumly, "spoil the brothel."