- Charles Snell: What goes on here?
- Roscoe Potts: Life, my boy. And death, of course. You can't have one without the other.
- Mrs. Bilbee: My name is Bilbee and I'm looking for the parasol department. The clerk said, "First left and straight on 'til morning," but that can't be right!
- Charles Snell: They're nice people, aren't they? A little odd, I'll grant you that, but after forty years in this place, I expect I'll be a little odd myself.
- Mrs. Monday: Tell me, Harkins, are you happy here?
- Ella Harkins: No, madam, I'm not happy here.
- Mrs. Monday: But you stay on?
- Ella Harkins: Yes, madam, I stay on.
- Mrs. Monday: Why do you?
- Ella Harkins: I'm so frightened of the dark men!
- Mrs. Monday: Nobody knows we live here, and nobody must ever know. Once we're discovered, it's the end of us.
- Mrs. Monday: I've lived here since the crash of '97. I've survived two mergers, three complete redecorations and the move from 14th Street. It required many sacrifices. May I say, I hope you're not the latest of them.
- Ella Harkins: They don't feed me. When they're through, I get what's left. They're skinny but they eat like elephants. I saw an elephant once when I was little and I know what elephants can eat!
- Charles Snell: Harkins, who are these dark men?
- Ella Harkins: There's a famous mortuary in Manhattan. Journey's End, I think it's called.
- Charles Snell: Yeah, I've heard of it.
- Ella Harkins: Well, people live there, just like here.
- Charles Snell: Live in a mortuary? Well, how can they? What... What do they live on?
- Charles Snell: Were you born here?
- Ella Harkins: No, I came when I was six.
- Charles Snell: That's amazing. You renounced the world when you were six!
- Charles Snell: You haven't seen the sun for 13 years?
- Ella Harkins: Oh, don't pity me. I have my memories.
- Ella Harkins: I can't read or write, I don't know what the world is...
- Charles Snell: What? You can't read or write?
- Ella Harkins: I never finished kindergarten.
- Charles Snell: Oh, that's wonderful! I'll teach you, like Pygmalion!
- Ella Harkins: I don't know anything. I've never spoken to a man before who wasn't old. I've never touched a face that wasn't wrinkled.
- Ella Harkins: We don't dare see each other again, it's too dangerous. They're watching us!
- Charles Snell: I don't see anybody.
- Ella Harkins: You never can. They watch in secret ways!
- Roscoe Potts: I'm reminded of the tragic story of young Phipps. Long years ago, there was a velvet smoking jacket on display. Young Phipps conceived a passion for it. Naturally the thing got sold and Phipps, his reason gone, emerged and tore it from a customer. We lived for months in terror dreading an investigation. What happened to the smoking jacket, no one knows. As for young Phipps, we had to call the dark men.
- The Judge: An intruder!
- Mrs. Bilbee: Call the dark men!
- Miss McLeash: Yes, call the dark men!
- The Judge: Call the dark men!
- Roscoe Potts: That's for Mrs. Monday to decide.
- Roscoe Potts: Charles, she's not one of us.
- Charles Snell: Well, why not? She lives here, doesn't she?
- Roscoe Potts: We keep her in the bargain basement, Seconds and Rejects department.
- Charles Snell: You keep her? Is the girl a prisoner?