- Shoreh: I'm afraid you will fall in love with me. All men fall in love with me because I always leave. And there's nothing men love more than the thing they cannot have.
- Kublai Khan: We have grown too accustomed to amazing things. We, whose feet lost form from walking the steppe, whose noses grew flat from punishing winds. We now have more food than our stomachs need. More warmth than our skin can bear. And so if you ask, "Why, then? Why do we need more?" I will tell you because that is what comes next.
- Empress Chabi: You have done what few before have ever managed of me.
- Marco Polo: What's that?
- Empress Chabi: You've changed my opinion of you.
- Ahmad: There are ways to break the Khan between now and then. Ways to weaken his credibility and ensure that our dear Nayan's armies are never called upon. You leave all of that to me.
- Nayan: [holding up his cup] And the Lord said, "I will fill with drunkenness all who live in this land. I will smash them one against the other, parents and children alike. I'll allow no pity or mercy or compassion to keep me from destroying them."
- [drinks]