A Familiar Sight Quotes

“We need people in our lives who don’t expect us to be anything but what we are,”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“Life wasn’t always about making the right choices. Sometimes it was about making the wrong ones just to see what would happen.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“Genetics loaded the gun, environment pulled the trigger.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“Knowing someone, all their weaknesses, all their beautiful insecurities and vulnerabilities, all the ways to manipulate them—it gave her”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“Gretchen’s pride was almost nonexistent when it came to getting things she wanted.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“There are brains that are more prone to illusory pattern perception,” Gretchen said instead of acknowledging it. “More prone to finding connections in unrelated data. They’re simply wired that way.” “All right, so what brains are prone?” “People who have an excess of dopamine pumping through their gray matter,” Gretchen said, popping a slice of decadent duck into her mouth. “It’s the reverse of low dopamine in addicts. That deficit makes them think that nothing matters. For someone with high dopamine levels, they think everything matters.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“Was she the type?” At that Gretchen clicked her tongue. “Anyone is the type.” “What do you mean?” “You empaths and your stereotypes,” Gretchen chided. “You think there’s one rigid moral code—usually squarely centered around your own belief system. If someone follows it, she’s ‘good.’ If she doesn’t, she’s ‘bad.’ As if that actually means anything at all, as if humans can be slotted into two permanent, unforgiving categories.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“Pareidolia,” Gretchen said easily, snagging the last pierogi without shame. “That’s a fancy word for humans’ tendency to find significance in something where there is none. Like kids finding shapes in clouds. We do that a lot. And that technically is a subset of apophenia, which is the tendency to find connections where they don’t exist.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“a mere ploy that had let him get close enough to bring her down into the comforter with him.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“As I said, a bleeding heart. Like magnets, they attract us.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“It was a shame that no one could truly appreciate the restraint she employed.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“There had been no handbook given out at birth on what to do when your daughter was a monster.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“Or so she informed Gretchen and Marconi as she served them off-brand Oreo-like cookies that tasted like cardboard and disappointment.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“Our justice system is a funny thing, isn’t it?” Gretchen said, idly flipping through the papers once more. “It’s set up to prevent biases, and yet every step of the process relies on human judgment in all of its flawed glory.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“No one was unequivocally moral, flawless, mistake-free. And yet empaths always seemed blinded to the faults of those they were closest to, while unable to offer understanding to those they didn’t know.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“Reed knew Viola’s true answer but was curious if she’d admitted it to a stranger. She would often pick truth and lies like shoes she was trying on for the day—whatever worked best for each situation.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“Always have an exit strategy, that was rule number one when interacting with normal people.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“facility presented a challenge”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“You could learn so much if you simply listened to people, even when—or especially when—they scared you.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“Dr. Chen had a magical way of describing the murders that professional words in a file could never do justice. Gretchen knew empaths didn’t like the stories as much as she did, that they tended to avoid coming down here when at all possible. But Dr. Chen wasn’t violent, nor was he a sociopath, so she thought that was fairly narrow-minded of them.”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“We need people in our lives who don’t expect us to be anything but what we are”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“once”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“apophenia,”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight

“Pareidolia,”
― Brianna Labuskes, A Familiar Sight