36 Streets Quotes

“I find the beginning of any relationship mostly about pretending to listen and holding in farts.”
― T.R. Napper, 36 Streets

“To one side were the windows, looking out over the city. Oceans of people passed, in the spaces between the neon and the streetlight. Towers of steel and glass, lighted windows, a universe in each one. People living their lives, side by side, yet so far from each other. Lin’s line of sight was the halo-billboard of the girl in a red dress, twirling it, smiling and mouthing the words: The Chinese Dream is my dream.”
― T.R. Napper, 36 Streets

“Paved alleyway, close on all sides, the old quarter. The men at Bia hoi She just watched her go, sullen, red-eyed. The heat beating down, worse than unusual, night but still unbearable, air thick. Tempers onedge, the aftermath of a Chinese crackdown the week before. A prism grenade thrown into a high-end restaurant popular with the Chinese military; two dead officers, two dead waiters, a dozen were injured. Not the most notable of attacks, except one of the dead officers was a general. So there were raids and arrests and bodies turning up, young men and young women, tortured and aired out and worse. Everyone was an informant, everyone Viet Minh, no one able to talk or trust.
She lurch-stepped down the alley. The thirty-six streets they called it.”
― T.R. Napper, 36 Streets