"When you going to cut this comedy, Marj?"
"I'm not. I'm just beginning."
"Breaking into high society, eh? Fine chance."
"Yes, with the gang of you down there hanging on like the plague, I got a swell chance, nix."
"It's because we know you too well, Marj. Knew you when you had two black pigtails and used to carry a bucket into the family entrance of Harry's place, crying with madness every time your old man sent you. Gad! I can see you yet, sweetness, with your big black eyes blacker than ever, and steering home your old man from off a jamboree."
"God! sometimes I wake up in the night just like him and ma was still alive and me and her was sitting there listening to him creak up the stairs on his bad nights. I wake up, I can tell you, in a sweat—right in a sweat."
"I knew you in them days, kiddo, just like you knew me. That's why you can't pull nothing over on a fellow, kiddo, that's had as many pulls on your all-day suckers as I have. You're a little quitter, you are, and sometimes I think you're out for bigger game."
"It don't mean because a girl was born in the mud she's got to stick there, does it?"
"No, but she can't pretend she don't know one of the old mud-turtles when she sees one."
"Mud-turtle is the right name."