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21 " Wasn't playing with her heart once enough? Hadn't he already torn her into two and left her to the wolves once before? "
― Chloe Gong , These Violent Delights (These Violent Delights #1)
22 " That is what this city is. The party at the end of the world. "
23 " This place hums to the tune of debauchery. This city is filthy and deep in the thrall of unending sin, so saturated with the kiss of decadence that the sky threatens to buckle and crush all those living vivaciously beneath it in punishment. "
24 " Too many kind hearts turn cold every day. "
25 " The land of dreams. Where men and women in white hoods roam the streets to murder Black folks. Where written laws prohibit the Chinese from stepping upon its shores. Where immigrant children are separated from immigrant mothers on Ellis Island, never to be seen again. "
26 " Entitlement that encouraged their wives to place a delicate handkerchief to their nose and sniff, wholeheartedly believing the tirade was deserved. They believed themselves the rulers of the world—on stolen land in America, on stolen land in Shanghai. Everywhere they went—entitlement. And Juliette was so tired. "
27 " You’re fluent in Russian and that’s the best you could come up with?” Roma asked, flabbergasted. “What is a Montague? It sounds Italian.”“There are Italian Communists!”“Not in Shanghai! "
28 " Those who do not care, those who are violent, those who delight in that which is terrible”—Marshall shrugged, waving his hands about as he chose the right words—“they thrive. They come outside. "
29 " If Roma were ever again to run a tender finger down her spine, it would be to count her vertebrae and gauge where he could stab his knife in. "
30 " Her feminine beauty was a concept as fleeting as power. If she acquired a tan, put on some weight, and let a few decades pass, the street artists would not be rendering her face to sell their creams anymore. Chinese and Western standards alike were arbitrary, pitiful things. But Juliette still needed to keep herself in line, force herself to follow them if people were to look up to her. "
31 " Sometimes it was hard for Kathleen to remember that she was still her own person, not just shards of a mirror, reflecting back a thousand different personalities most fitting for the situation. "
32 " So don’t start believing that skill is all it takes to stay at the top. Loyalty plays its dirty hand too, and it is a fickle, ever-changing thing. "
33 " The problem with hatred was that when the initial emotion weakened, the responses still remained. The clenched fist and hot veins, the blurred vision and quickened pulse. And in such remains, Juliette was not in control of what they might develop into. "
34 " There was so much luck to be had in the genetic lottery; one different code and it was a whole lifetime of forced adaptation. "
35 " Was it loyalty that created power? Or was loyalty only a symptom, offered when the circumstances were favorable and taken away when the tides turned? It helped that Lord Cai and Lord Montagov were men. Juliette wasn’t naive. Their every messenger, every errand runner, every lower-tiered but fiercely loyal gangster was male. Most of the Scarlet Gang feared and revered Juliette now, "
36 " that when you assume someone cannot speak English right off the bat, they tend to make fun of you. "
37 " Juliette breathed in and found her lungs to be horribly tight. Could she never be both? Was she doomed to choose one country or the other? Be an American or nothing? "
38 " Roma wasn’t sure if Benedikt and Marshall were fated to eventually kill each other or kiss each other. "
39 " Do I? she wanted to say. Would I be less if I sounded like my mother, my father, and all those in this city who were forced to learn more than one language, unlike you? "
40 " Roma was not afraid. He only feared the power of others. Monsters and things that walked the night were strong, but they were not powerful. There was a difference. "