Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2024 Update)

1. “Courage is the root of change – and change is what we’re chemically designed to do.”

— Bonnie Garmus

2. “Courage is the root of change – and change is what we’re chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others’ opinions of what you can and cannot achieve.”

— Bonnie Garmus

3. “Specifically, I wanted to ask: Don’t you think it’s possible to believe in both God and science?” “Sure,” Calvin had written back. “It’s called intellectual dishonesty.”

— Bonnie Garmus

4. “Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself.”

— Bonnie Garmus

5. “Chemistry is change and change is the core of your belief system. Which is good because that’s what we need more of – people who refuse to accept the status quo, who aren’t afraid to take on the unacceptable.”

— Bonnie Garmus

6. “Chemistry is inseparable from life – by its very definition, chemistry is life. But like your pie, life requires a strong base. In your home, you are that base. It is an enormous responsibility, the most undervalued job in the world that, nonetheless, holds everything together.”

— Bonnie Garmus

7. “Take a moment for yourself,” Harriet said. “Every day.” “A moment.” “A moment where you are your own priority. Just you.”

— Bonnie Garmus

8. “Not every woman wants to be a mother,” he agreed, surprising her. “More to the point, not every woman should be.”

— Bonnie Garmus

9. “Every day she found parenthood like taking a test for which she had not studied. The questions were daunting and there wasn’t nearly enough multiple choice.”

— Bonnie Garmus

10. “It’s all right not to believe in God,” Wakely said. “That’s one of the things we mean when we say it’s a free country. People are welcome to believe whatever they want as long as their beliefs don’t hurt others. Besides, I happen to think science is a form of religion.”

— Bonnie Garmus

11. “Obviously, she couldn’t possibly be rowing with Evans. An elite rower like Evans would never deign to get in a boat with a novice, even if they were sleeping together. Scratch that; especially if they were sleeping together. Evans probably signed her up for some beginner crew, and Zott, wanting to prove that she could hold her own – per usual – went along with it. He shuddered at the thought of a bunch of struggling rowers, their blades hitting the water like out-of-control spatulas.”

— Bonnie Garmus

12. “Sometimes I think,” she said slowly, “that if a man were to spend a day being a woman in America, he wouldn’t make it past noon.”

— Bonnie Garmus

13. “Not that there was anything wrong with being unattractive. She was unattractive and she knew it. She also knew that Calvin Evans was unattractive, and the sloppy dog Elizabeth brought home one day was unattractive, and there was a good chance Elizabeth’s future baby would be unattractive, too. But none of them were – or would ever be – ugly. Only Mr. Sloane was ugly, and that was because he was unattractive on the inside.”

— Bonnie Garmus

14. “And who can blame him, because you know the invisible hand is libertarian garbage.”

— Bonnie Garmus

15. “Tall and angular, with hair the color of burnt buttered toast pulled back and secured with a pencil, she stood, hands on hips, her lips unapologetically red, her skin luminous, her nose straight. She looked down at him like a battlefield medic assessing whether or not he was worth saving.”

— Bonnie Garmus

16. “Despite what Elizabeth Zott will tell you, Supper at Six is not just an introduction to chemistry, he wrote that day on the plane. It’s a thirty-minute, five-day-a-week lesson in life. And not in who we are or what we’re made of, but rather, who we’re capable of becoming.”

— Bonnie Garmus

17. “During one of the advertising breaks he turned to the woman next to him. “If you don’t mind me asking,” he said politely, showing his credentials, “what is it that you like about the show?” “Being taken seriously.” “Not the recipes?” She looked back incredulously. “Sometimes I think,” she said slowly, “that if a man were to spend a day being a woman in America, he wouldn’t make it past noon.”

— Bonnie Garmus

18. “Every day she found parenthood like taking a test for which she had not studied. The questions were daunting and there wasn’t nearly enough multiple choice. Occasionally she woke up damp with sweat, having imagined a knock at the door and some sort of authority figure with an empty baby-sized basket saying, “We’ve just reviewed your last parental performance report and there’s really no nice way to put this. You’re fired.”

— Bonnie Garmus

19. “For Elizabeth, cooking wasn’t some preordained feminine duty. As she’d told Calvin, cooking was chemistry. That’s because cooking actually is chemistry.”

— Bonnie Garmus

20. “Elizabeth Zott held grudges too. Except her grudges were mainly reserved for a patriarchal society founded on the idea that women were less. Less capable. Less intelligent. Less inventive. A society that believed men went to work and did important things – discovered planets, developed products, created laws – and women stayed at home and raised children.”

— Bonnie Garmus

21. “Mr. Sloane truly believed other women found him attractive. Harriet had no idea where that specific brand of self-confidence came from. Because while stupid people may not know they’re stupid because they’re stupid, surely unattractive people must know they’re unattractive because of mirrors.”

— Bonnie Garmus

22. “But a chilly splash of water in the face off starboard, just before dawn? It fixes things.”

— Bonnie Garmus

23. “Like most stupid people, Mr. Sloane wasn’t smart enough to know just how stupid he was.”

— Bonnie Garmus

24. “Being an adult is overrated, don’t you think?” he said. “Just as you solve one problem, ten more pull up.”

— Bonnie Garmus

25. “Too many brilliant minds are kept from scientific research thanks to ignorant biases like gender and race. It infuriates me and it should infuriate you. Science has big problems to solve: famine, disease, extinction. And those who purposefully close the door to others using self-serving, outdated cultural notions are not only dishonest, they’re knowingly lazy. Hastings Research Institute is full of them.”

— Bonnie Garmus

26. “Look,” he said, “life has never been fair, and yet you continue to operate as if it is – as if once you get a few wrongs straightened out, everything else will fall into place. They won’t. You want my advice?” And before she could say no, he added, “Don’t work the system. Outsmart it.”

— Bonnie Garmus

27. “It wasn’t that he couldn’t function without her, he told Four Seat, but rather that he didn’t see the point of functioning without her. “I don’t know what to call it,” he’d confided following a full examination. “Am I addicted to her? Am I dependent in some sick sort of way? Could I have a brain tumor?” “Jesus, Six, it’s called happiness,” Four Seat explained. “When’s the wedding?”

— Bonnie Garmus

28. “He’d never been one for self-improvement – never even gotten through Dale Carnegie’s book about making friends and influencing people because ten pages in he realized he didn’t care what anyone else thought. But that was before Elizabeth – before he realized that making her happy made him happy. Which, he thought, as he grabbed his tennis shoes, had to be the very definition of love. To actually want to change for someone else.”

— Bonnie Garmus

29. “Hello, Creature, he transmitted as he pressed his ear into Elizabeth’s belly. It’s me, Six-Thirty. I’m the dog.”

— Bonnie Garmus

30. “Humans were strange, Six-Thirty thought, the way they constantly battled dirt in their aboveground world, but after death willingly entombed themselves in it.”

— Bonnie Garmus

31. “Unlike ink, graphite is erasable. People make mistakes, Mr. Roth. Pencil allows one to clear the mistake and move on. Scientists expect mistakes and, because of it, we embrace failure.”

— Bonnie Garmus

32. “But weathering is called weathering for a reason: it erodes. As the months went by, her fortitude was tested again and again. The only thing that gave her any respite at all was the theater, and even that sometimes disappointed.”

— Bonnie Garmus

33. “Because while she was stuck forever being Mrs. Sloane – she was a Catholic – she never wanted to turn into a Mr. Sloane.”

— Bonnie Garmus

34. “I don’t have hopes,” Mad explained, studying the address. “I have faith.” He looked at her in surprise. “Well, that’s a funny word to hear coming from you.” “How come?” “Because,” he said, “well, you know. Religion is based on faith.” “But you realize,” she said carefully, as if not to embarrass him further, “that faith isn’t based on religion. Right?”

— Bonnie Garmus

35. “She’d felt this way her entire life. She’d been defined not by what she did, but by what others had done. In the past she was either the offspring of an arsonist, the daughter of a serial wife, the sister of a hanged homosexual, or the graduate student of a renowned lecher. Now she was the girlfriend of a famous chemist. But she was never just Elizabeth Zott.”

— Bonnie Garmus

36. “It’s not your imagination, said the note on top. Most people are awful.”

— Bonnie Garmus

37. “Whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change- and change is what we’re chemically designed to do. So when you wake up tomorrow, make this pledge. No more holding yourself back. No more subscribing to others’ opinions of what you can and cannot achieve. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started.”

— Bonnie Garmus

38. “No surprise. Idiots make it into every company. They tend to interview well.”

— Bonnie Garmus

39. “What did I tell you? Your bond with that boy is hydrogen only. When are you going to wake up and smell the ions?”

— Bonnie Garmus

40. “In the past she was either the offspring of an arsonist, the daughter of a serial wife, the sister of a hanged homosexual, or the graduate student of a renowned lecher.”

— Bonnie Garmus

41. “The tombstone was supposed to have read, “Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun,” a quote from Marcus Aurelius, but the tombstone was small and the engraver had made the first part too big and had run out of room.”

— Bonnie Garmus

42. “It was because of Six-Thirty. He was always there, sniffing out danger, blocking light sockets, positioning himself beneath the bookshelf so when she scaled it – which she did nearly every day – he would be the cushion that broke her fall. He’d failed once to protect someone he loved. He would not fail again.”

— Bonnie Garmus

43. “Don’t work the system. Outsmart it.”

— Bonnie Garmus

44. “God is why they were still married and why their marriage was her burden to bear – because it was given to her by God. God was big on burdens, and He made sure everyone got one.”

— Bonnie Garmus

45. “Everyone has a breaking point; she worried that Elizabeth had finally reached hers.”

— Bonnie Garmus

46. “Courage is the root of change.”

— Bonnie Garmus

47. “It’s one thing to be brilliant, but to be brilliant without opportunity – that was something else. If Mozart had been born to a poor family in Bombay instead of a cultured one in Salzburg, would he have composed Symphony no. 36 in C? Not a chance.”

— Bonnie Garmus

48. “The librarian is the most important educator in school. What she doesn’t know, she can find out. This is not an opinion; it’s a fact.”

— Bonnie Garmus

49. “You make a fair point, Evans,” Wakely wrote back. “But people need to believe in something bigger than themselves.” “Why?” Calvin pressed. “What’s wrong with believing in ourselves? Anyway, if stories must be used, why not rely on a fable or fairy tale? Aren’t they just as valid a vehicle for teaching morality? Except maybe better? Because no one has to pretend to believe that the fables and tales are true?”

— Bonnie Garmus

50. “I’ve never understood why when women marry, they’re expected to trade in their old names like used cars, losing their last and sometimes even their first.”

— Bonnie Garmus