These Violent Delights Quotes

Memories were beastly little creatures, after all—they rose with the faintest whiff of nourishment.

She…hoped. And hope was dangerous. Hope was the most vicious evil of them all, the thing that had managed to thrive in Pandora’s box among misery, and disease, and sadness—and what could endure alongside others with such teeth if it didn’t have ghastly claws of its own?.

I was raised in hatred, Roma. I could never be your lover, only your killer.

You destroy me and then you kiss me. You give me a reason to hat you and then you give me a reason to love you. Is this a lie or the truth? Is the a ploy or your heart reaching for me?.

the most dangerous people are the powerful white men who feel as if they have been slighted.

Even the land of dreams needs to wake up sometimes.

sed non obligant.

And he mourned for her. He didn’t wish to, but he did—he ached with the knowledge that the softness of their youth was gone forever, that the Juliette he remembered was long dead. He ached even more to think that though he was the one who had dealt the killing blow,.

Wasn't playing with her heart once enough? Hadn't he already torn her into two and left her to the wolves once before?.

That is what this city is. The party at the end of the world.

This is why my betrayal was so terrible. Because you believed me incapable of hurting you, and yet I did.

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.

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.

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.

Too many kind hearts turn cold every day.

they thrive. They come outside.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There was so much luck to be had in the genetic lottery; one different code and it was a whole lifetime of forced adaptation.

that when you assume someone cannot speak English right off the bat, they tend to make fun of you.

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,.

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?.

Roma wasn’t sure if Benedikt and Marshall were fated to eventually kill each other or kiss each other.

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?.

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.

Civilized? You have me at knifepoint." "You had me at gunpoint" "I'm on your territory — I had no choice.

Juliette embraced danger with open arms. It seemed that Roma couldn’t do so even when his whole world was at risk, even while Alisa was strapped down by her arms and legs.

Was the line between enemy and friend horizontal or vertical? Was it a great plain to lumber across or was it a high, high wall—either to be scaled or kicked down in one big blow?.

She wished she could fill herself up like this. She wished she could press mounds of rich soil into the gaps of her heart, occupying the space until flowers could take root and grow roses. Maybe then she wouldn't be hearing Roma's voice in her head over and over again, taking up every inch of her thoughts.

The rich and the foreign, they didn’t truly believe it. To them, this madness sweeping the city was nothing except Chinese nonsense—only to affect the doomed poor, only to touch the believers caught in their tradition. They thought their glistening marble could keep out contagion because the contagion was nothing save the hysteria of savages.

I hate that the blood feud forced my hand, but I can’t—I did what I had to do and you may think me monstrous for it. The feud keeps taking and hurting and killing and still I couldn’t stop loving you even when I thought I hated you.

This is why we shall not love more than we need to. Death will come for everyone in the end—.

No, he is mine to deal with. He is mine to destroy.

A long time ago, Roma had told Juliette that her anger was like a cold diamond. It was something she could swallow smoothly, something to be placed upon other people, gliding along their skin in glitter and glamour before they realized far too late that the diamond had sliced them into pieces. He had admired her for it. Mostly because his own anger was the precise opposite—an uncontrollable wave of fire that knew no subtlety.

She could save herself the agony of hope.

The answer was: yes. But it wasn’t entirely their fault. The Chinese had built the pit, gathered the wood, and lit the match, but it was the foreigners who had come in and poured gasoline upon every surface, letting Shanghai rage into an untamable forest fire of debauchery.