Polly Adler

Pearl "Polly" Adler (April 16, 1900 – June 9, 1962) was an American madam and author, best known for her work A House Is Not a Home, which was adapted into a film of the same name.

Quotes

A House Is Not a Home (1953)

New York: Rinehart & Co.

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.
- Ch. 1, sec. 4, p. 31

Harold was tops as a cavalier; every day he sent me more gardenias than most people go to the grave with.
- Ch. 8, sec. 5, p. 279

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.
- Ch. 9, sec. 2, p. 309

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.
- Ch. 10, sec. 1, p. 336

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.
- Ch. 10, sec. 3, p. 348

"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."
- Ch. 11, sec. 3, p. 373

External links

Encyclopedic article on Polly Adler on Wikipedia