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I wish I could take credit for the quote about the dark alleys, but it's not mine; thank James D. Nicoll. The full quote is "We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." Or so says WikiQuote; variants abound. That's one of my favorite quotes on the origin of English; another is H. Beam Piper's (from Fuzzy Sapiens, if I recall correctly): "English is the result of Norman men-at-arms attempting to pick up Saxon barmaids and is no more legitimate than any of the other results."
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