Familiaris Quotes

“Categories are the fuel and ammunition of all mistaken thought.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“He felt not hungry, not thirsty, not tired, not even remotely bored, simply above all physical concern, in communion with the movement of time and the world’s steady turning, and he wondered if this was how it felt to be immortal, to know that life had a definite vessel, a tangible purpose: caretaker and courier of the rare, the valuable, the beloved.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“tribemates”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“there are times you need a roof, and there are times you need a road.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“And their people loved explaining to John what they loved about their dogs—and especially what they hated about other people’s dogs.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“Suppose you could do one impossible thing.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“Over the next twelve hours John Sawtelle’s body surrendered to what would later be called a cytokine storm. Certain tissues, in a panic, vomited indiscriminate gouts of alarm chemicals into his bloodstream. Other tissues, seeing this, concluded that the apocalypse was nigh. His organs, once a friendly federation, turned into a collection of survivalist encampments. Hunter cells appeared. Spongey bodies. They hunted and sponged anything remotely resembling a virus or bacterium. Then they attacked each other. Then they attacked the organs that had released them: lungs, heart, brain, marrow, follicular melanocytes. Every cell was guilty until proven innocent. Every cell gave up the names of other suspects.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“You are excused from this evening's exercise. You will instead spend the evening reviewing the introductory statistics textbook my Staff Sergeant will provide you. And do you know why?” “Sir? No, Sir.” “Because in this army, as in this life, your first obligation is to not be an idiot.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“You know what your problem is?”, John said. “You don't believe in impossible things.” “Impossible meaning what?” “Meaning impossible. Something you have every reason to expect can't happen based on your life so far. And that's a shame. A person ought to believe that at least one impossible thing could happen.” “Why?” “Because it's interesting for one thing. Also it could save your life.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“It doesn't feel like you're gone sometimes.
Sometimes all I can feel is that you're gone.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“It doesn’t matter who’s coming. What matters is who stays when the people who’ve come along decide to leave.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“There is no such thing as misbehavior. Only behavior.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“Perhaps it was the writing of these”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“concentrated its most creative growth around its worst injuries.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“How had people ever concluded that they could own land in the first place? The land had always been there, and it would outlast any human claimant by a thousand centuries.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“Bachelor isn't right, I know. I'm a widower. But I hate that word. It reminds me that you're not here, and you're not ever going to be here, and then if feels like my chest is having an earthquake. So I say bachelor.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“You were always so good with the dogs, Mary -- you amazed me. When they were born, you were the first human being they met. Or I should say sensed, being blind and deaf. Your hands were the first to touch every dog that came into the world under our care, and I can't help but believe that made a difference. Both ways -- who would you have turned out to be if you hadn't touched all those newborn pups? Who would those pups have turned out to be if they hadn't met the world in your caress? You were at the tip of a very long lever, and if nurture really does trump nature, then every pup came into the world greeted by the scent of their mother and the touch of Mary Sawtelle. I believe they remembered you all their lives. I never told you that when we were traveling, but I could see it every time we walked up to a house or a yard: they knew me, but they remembered you.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“candy-ass people find candy-ass ways to express their opinions—now there was a truth waiting to be engraved over some library’s entrance.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“I’m tired of all the death this world keeps insisting on.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“It’s a metaphor, Elbow.” “Got that.” And if you don't believe that an impossible thing could happen to you, when would you ever consider the most important impossibility of all?” “Which is?” “Suppose you could do one impossible thing.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“it was never in a person’s interest to try to end-run his mother. If she thought a thing could be done, it usually meant she had three different ways to accomplish it in mind.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“John once claimed that the way to convince a person to do something outlandish was to ask them to do something even more outlandish.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“You can never watch too many pups climb through the straw for the first time, but there are just so many dogs you can bear watch to die.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“Perhaps there were no ideas in the abstract. Only a person’s reaction to experiences, spaces, arrangements.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“He spoke not to a person but to an audience of one.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“Mary directed her abundance, like her gaze, unconsciously, gracing whatever interested her, and depriving whatever didn’t.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“You're either wrong for the right reason or right for the wrong reason.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“You needed a patience that spanned generations. And you needed a willingness to sit back and watch how things turned out without leaping to interfere.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“Time is a snake-oil remedy if you ask me. Some wounds just keep hurting as bad as they ever did.
That's what I think.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris

“A job was a job, nothing more—not a family, not worth loyalty, much less love. Yet at the same time, a factory truly was like the world. It contained friendship and grace and catastrophe and victory and striving and romance and laughter and betrayal—if you knew to watch for those things. If you knew how to see those things, which not everyone did. When you were there, you were making whatever it was you were making, but you were also making a world exist.”
― David Wroblewski, Familiaris