T.R. Napper > Quotes

“He felt the city reach out and embrace him with its vast indifference.”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“This city runs over with ghosts and neon gods.”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“This law is immutable. The user always pays.”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“...memories are not just for the individual. They make up our collective consciousness. They are a common resource that teaches us who we are and how to be.”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“When our decision-making is nurtured by corporate algorithm, when so many of our experiences are their simulations of experience, when we’ve outsourced our memories to be stored and filed away, by them. When our every moment is sampled, deconstructed, and built back into Trojans—advertising, architecture, news reports—that reformat our lives. How can we exist, then, when we’re someone else’s dream? They create these cities, Jack, and cities are huge external memory devices. But the memories are not ours, always those of others.”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“Districts protected by law, by drone, by truncheon, and by thirty-dollar lattes.”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“They create the spaces within which we live our lives, moulding us to fit into the places they define—public or private, park or car park. We are created and re-created by our spaces. It’s a constant feedback loop. Space shapes behaviour—what you can do in it, what you can’t. It’s identity. Here, we can exist, in a space not fully imaged, but once their minds return to this place, we will be gone.”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“You can go either way, after being rammed into the wall of reality. You can fall apart or toughen the fuck up.”
― T.R. Napper, Ghost of the Neon God

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

“Listen,” said Aurora, hands up, like a policeman halting traffic. “Everyone stop saying cat.” The men went silent. Aurora took a deep breath. “Do you know why we have the Australia Cards? The universal basic income?” “Dunno,” said Jack. “Charity, I suppose.” “Yes,” said Minh. “Why?” “Well—you ever notice the biggest supporters of a universal wage aren’t charities or churches?” “Nah,” said Tommy. “It’s those rich bastards.” “Exactly. Silicon Valley. The banks. You know why? They need customers for the businesses they own, and they own bloody everything. They need our disposable income. But there’s no jobs anymore, the automation they invented took them all. Forty percent unemployment, half the rest working part-time gigs. So: they lobbied the government to give out free money.”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“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

“Lastly, I’ll give you a tear gas grenade A tear gland for this modern epoch A type of tear neither sad nor happy Drenching my face as I wait. Tran Da Tu, Saigon, 1964”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“I couldn’t distinguish between playing the slots and dreaming about them. What was real, what was imagined.”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“There’s no contemplation, no quiet choices,” Col continued. “No place to be alone, even in our own heads. We are a product of the freewave. The single most important product. Every moment we use it we contribute to the knowledge of the mega-corps. Monetizing our data, freely, willingly giving them the information they need to perfect their control.”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“– (image) green halo, hovering above my head –  / – (voice): desuetude, decline of neural pathways. Everything we’ve always wanted – / – (image) the bright blue-glowing logo of Baosteel – / (image) man in an expensive suit holding a purple pill between thumb and forefinger –”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“I treated a man who was there when Kiribati went under. A whole nation, wiped from the face of the Earth.” “Shouldn’t we remember that?” The doctor tilted her head at him. “What do you mean?” “Shouldn’t we bear witness to that loss?”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“You don’t need to save the world, Kindred. You just need to save yourself.”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“All souls needs communion, even the old and bitter ones. These, most of all.”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan

“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

“...inside a silver cage hung from the ceiling, a yellow bird sang, oblivious.”
― T.R. Napper, Neon Leviathan