Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “You know very well women do not continue to work when pregnant. But you-you’re not only with child, you’re unwed. It’s disgraceful.”

— Bonnie Garmus

102. “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

103. “But instead,” she continued, “women are at home, making babies and cleaning rugs. It’s legalized slavery. Even the women who wish to be homemakers find their work completely misunderstood. Men seem to think the average mother of five’s biggest decision of the day is what color to paint her nails.”

— Bonnie Garmus

104. “Plus, getting back in a boat will make you feel so much better. We all,” he said, thinking of his row that morning, “will feel so much better. Ask your neighbor. See if she won’t watch the baby.” “At four thirty in the morning?” “This is what is so unsung about rowing,” Dr. Mason said, turning to leave. “It happens at a time when no one’s really that busy.”

— Bonnie Garmus

105. “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

106. “And then there was the illogical art of female friendship itself, the way it seemed to demand an ability to both keep and reveal secrets using precise timing. Whenever she moved to a new town, girls would take her aside at Sunday school and breathlessly confide their crushes on certain boys.”

— Bonnie Garmus

107. “I’m speaking of fixing us, Mr. Roth – our mistakes. Nature works on a higher intellectual plane. We can learn more, we can go further, but to accomplish this, we must throw open the doors. Too many brilliant minds are kept from scientific research thanks to ignorant biases like gender and race.”

— Bonnie Garmus

108. “Many believe protein comes from meat, eggs, and fish,” she was saying, “but protein originates in plants, and plants are what the biggest, strongest animals in the world eat.”

— Bonnie Garmus

109. “From across the room, Elizabeth straightened her papers, then rose. “Sorry to cut this short, Calvin, but I have a meeting.” “A meeting?” Calvin said, as if she’d just announced she was attending an execution. “If you worked in my lab, you’d never have to go to meetings.”

— Bonnie Garmus

110. “She didn’t want children – she knew this about herself – but she also knew that plenty of other women did want children and a career. And what was wrong with that? Nothing. It was exactly what men got.”

— Bonnie Garmus

111. “Did you see that?” the coxswain shouted angrily at his crew. “Did you see how she gets length without overreaching?”

— Bonnie Garmus

112. “She couldn’t remember how soon into their marriage she began to realize she wasn’t in love with him, nor he with her, but it was probably somewhere between the way he pronounced drawer “joor” and the way his thicket of body hair constantly detached itself like seeds from a dandelion head, blanketing their home.”

— Bonnie Garmus

113. “Imagine if all men took women seriously. Education would change. The workforce would revolutionize. Marriage counsellors would go out of business. Do you see my point?”

— Bonnie Garmus

114. “Except her grudges were mainly reserved for a patriarchal society founded on the idea that women were less. Less capable. Less intelligent. Less inventive.”

— Bonnie Garmus

115. “Naked and the Dead.”

— Bonnie Garmus

116. “Let’s say supper at six, then,” Elizabeth said, not wanting her to go. “The home lab. Everyone – you, Wilson, Mad, Sixty-Thirty, me, Harriet, Walter. You’ll need to meet Wakely and Mason at some point, too. The whole family.”

— Bonnie Garmus

117. “Do not allow your talents to lie dormant, ladies. Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started.”

— Bonnie Garmus

118. “They were all strangers, each living in a far-off city with lives and children of their own. She wanted to think there was some iron-clad bond that connected her to them for life, but that’s not how it worked. Families required constant maintenance.”

— Bonnie Garmus

119. “When it came to equality, 1952 was a real disappointment. “You have to apologize to.”

— Bonnie Garmus

120. “As he bent down to tie his laces, his chest filled with something new. Was it gratitude? He, the early orphaned, never-before-loved, unattractive Calvin Evans, had, by hook or by crook, found this woman, this dog, this research, this row, this run, Jack. It was all so much more than he’d ever expected, so much more than he ever deserved.”

— Bonnie Garmus

121. “Dolphins are smart,” they’d say. “But cows aren’t.” This seemed partly based on the fact that cows didn’t do tricks. In Six-Thirty’s view that made cows smarter, not dumber.”

— Bonnie Garmus

122. “She looked like a cross between a hotel maid and a bomb squad expert.”

— Bonnie Garmus

123. “If relationships are a puzzle, then theirs was solved from the get-go – as if someone shook out the box and watched from above as each separate piece landed exactly right, slipping one into the other, fully interlocked, into a picture that made perfect sense.”

— Bonnie Garmus

124. “But Madeline is the tallest one in your class.” “Which is another problem,” Mudford said. “Her height is making the boys feel bad.”

— Bonnie Garmus

125. “As any non-rower can tell you, rowers are not fun. This is because rowers only ever want to talk about rowing. Get two or more rowers in a room and the conversation goes from normal topics like work or weather to long, pointless stories about boats, blisters, oars, grips, ergs, feathers, workouts, catches, releases, recoveries, splits, seats, strokes, slides, starts, settles, sprints, and whether the water was really “flat” or not.”

— Bonnie Garmus

126. “Kin,” she finished. It was that last word that cemented their odd, tell-all friendship, the kind that only arises when a wronged person meets someone who has been similarly wronged and discovers that while it may be the only thing they share, it is more than enough.”

— Bonnie Garmus

127. “Which is another problem,” Mudford said. “Her height is making the boys feel bad.”

— Bonnie Garmus

128. “His wife had recently left him, saying that he didn’t respect her job as a housewife and mother. But being a housewife and mother wasn’t really a job, was it? More like a role. Anyway, she was gone.”

— Bonnie Garmus

129. “Dr. Mason had warned her that infants were hard work, but this wasn’t work: it was indenture. The tiny tyrant was no less demanding than Nero; no less insane than King Ludwig. And the crying. It made her feel inadequate. Worse, it raised the possibility that her daughter might not like her. Already.”

— Bonnie Garmus

130. “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

131. “Whenever you start doubting yourself, whenever you feel afraid, just remember. Courage is the root of change and change is what we’re chemically designed to do.”

— Bonnie Garmus

132. “Imagine if all men took women seriously. Education would change. The workforce would revolutionize.”

— Bonnie Garmus

133. “I’m an atheist, Mr. Roth,” she said, sighing heavily. “Actually, a humanist. But I have to admit, some days the human race makes me sick.”

— Bonnie Garmus

134. “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 – Mrs. John Adams! Mrs. Abe Lincoln! – as if their previous identities had just been twenty-odd-year placeholders before they became actual people. Mrs. Peter Dickman. It’s a life sentence.”

— Bonnie Garmus

135. “Nature works on a higher intellectual plane. We can learn more, we can go further, but to accomplish this, we must throw open the doors. 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.”

— Bonnie Garmus

136. “But she had learned that underemployment was worse. Not only did her paycheck reflect her lowly status, but her brain hurt from inactivity. And yet despite the fact that her colleagues knew she could run intellectual circles around them, she was expected to rah-rah whatever minor accomplishments they churned out.”

— Bonnie Garmus

137. “Lying is a sin, but brag-lying? There’s nothing worse.”

— Bonnie Garmus

138. “And it was all because Calvin continued to omit one simple truth: the pair is the hardest boat to row. It’s like trying to learn to fly by starting out in a B-52. But what choice did he have? He knew the men weren’t going to let her row with them in a bigger boat like an eight; besides being female, her lack of experience meant she’d ruin the row. Worse, she’d probably catch a crab and crack a few ribs. He hadn’t mentioned crabs yet. For obvious reasons.”

— Bonnie Garmus

139. “She didn’t want children – she knew this about herself – but she also knew that plenty of other women did want children and a career.”

— Bonnie Garmus

140. “Challenge yourself lades. Use the laws of chemistry and change the status quo.”

— Bonnie Garmus

141. “What I find interesting about rowing,” Dr. Mason was saying, “is that it’s always done backwards. It’s almost as if the sport itself is trying to teach us not to get ahead of ourselves.”

— Bonnie Garmus

142. “Physical suffering, he’d long ago learned, bonds people in a way that everyday life can’t.”

— Bonnie Garmus

143. “We never say fairy godfathers. The fairy person is always female. Because of organized crime?”

— Bonnie Garmus

144. “God was big on burdens, and He made sure everyone got one.”

— Bonnie Garmus

145. “People often underestimate what a pregnant woman is capable of, but people always underestimate what a grieving pregnant woman is capable of.”

— Bonnie Garmus

146. “Men and women are both human beings. And as humans, we’re by-products of our upbringings, victims of our lackluster educational systems, and choosers of our behaviors. In short, the reduction of women to something less than men, and the elevation of men to something more than women, is not biological: it’s cultural.”

— Bonnie Garmus

147. “They sat for a minute in uncomfortable silence, the hateful little blue box plopped between them like a bad referee at a tight match.”

— Bonnie Garmus

148. “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

149. “One thing I’ve learned, Calvin: people will always yearn for a simple solution to their complicated problems. It’s a lot easier to have faith in something you can’t see, can’t touch, can’t explain, and can’t change, rather than to have faith in something you actually can.” She sighed. “One’s self, I mean.”

— Bonnie Garmus

150. “Bridesmaids’ dresses are designed to make the women in them look unappealing; that way the bride looks better than usual. It’s an accepted practice, a basic defensive strategy with biological roots. You see this sort of thing in nature all the time.”

— Bonnie Garmus