- 'Mother' Gin Sling: [of an ordinance that would outlaw her establishment] I've lived by my own ordinances for a long time now, and I intend to disregard all others.
- Poppy: You don't drink, Mother Gin Sling? Is your name Chinese or English?
- 'Mother' Gin Sling: Indeed Gin Sling is English. It's a nickname as common in this part of the world as the drink sold over the counter.
- Poppy: Why Gin Sling? Why not Whiskey Soda?
- 'Mother' Gin Sling: There was a girl called Whiskey Soda too. And another one - Martini. And one called Scotch Highball, another Benedictine. In other places I might have been called Rose, or Violet, or Lily, or, eh, even Poppy.
- Poppy: The other places are like kindergardens compared with this. It smells so incredibly evil! I didn't think such a place existed except in my own imagination. It has a ghastly familiarity like a half-remembered dream. *Anything* could happen here... any moment...
- 'Mother' Gin Sling: [on being a sex slave] My soles cut open and pebbles sewn inside to keep me from running away!
- Omar: The moving finger writes, and having writ - it moves on. Nor all your piety nor wit shall lure it back to cancel half a line, nor all your tears wash out a word of it.