Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “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

152. “After she left, Calvin clasped his hands together in a silent fit of glee and flipped on the hi-fi, dropping the needle on “Sunny Side of the Street.” For a second time, he’d saved the person he loved the most, and the best part was, she didn’t know.”

— Bonnie Garmus

153. “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

154. “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

155. “The problem with being a minister was how many times a day he had to lie. This was because people needed constant reassurance that things were okay or were going to be okay instead of the more obvious reality that things were bad and were only going to get worse.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

157. “But things will be fine. Maybe even better than fine. A dog, an erg, two seat. Excellent.”

— Bonnie Garmus

158. “But what he realized through his self-study was that the complexity of chemistry went well beyond birthright, that it twisted and turned in sometimes heartless ways. And thus he had to live with the knowledge that not only had this other father discarded him – without even meeting him – but that chemistry itself had spawned the grudge he could neither hide nor outgrow.”

— Bonnie Garmus

159. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

161. “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

162. “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

163. “I’m a chemist. Not a woman chemist. A chemist. A damn good one!” “Well, I’m a personnel expert! An almost-psychologist,” Frask shouted. “Almost-psychologist?” “Shut up.” “No really,” Zott said. “Almost?” “I didn’t have a chance to finish, okay? What about you?”

— Bonnie Garmus

164. “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

165. “She knew people in high-stress jobs often longed for a simpler position – something that didn’t require heart or brainpower; something that didn’t prey on their sagging spirits at three in the morning. But she learned underemployment was worse. Not only did her paycheck reflect her lowly status, but her brain hurt from inactivity.”

— Bonnie Garmus

166. “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

167. “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

168. “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

169. “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

170. “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

171. “Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. She did not care for people who made assumptions based on what she felt were long-outdated visual clues, and she also didn’t care for men who believed, even if she had been a secretary, that being a secretary meant she was incapable of understanding words beyond.”

— Bonnie Garmus

172. “Walter, don’t you find it interesting that people even use that term ‘act of God’? Considering that most want to believe that God is about lambs and love and babies in mangers, and yet this same so-called benevolent being smites innocent people left and right, indicating an anger management problem – maybe even manic depression. In a psychiatric ward, such a patient would be subjected to electroshock therapy. Which.”

— Bonnie Garmus

173. “Normal isn’t like weather; you can’t expect normal. You can’t even make normal. From what I can tell, normal may not exist.”

— Bonnie Garmus

174. “Blindside,” Wilson repeated. “You know. Like the way you blindsided us by misappropriating Parker Foundation funds. Or the way you blindsided Miss Zott – or should I say Mr. Zott? – when you stole her work.”

— Bonnie Garmus

175. “You and Evans rowed in my eight a few times – do you remember? About seven months ago. Good rows, too. But then you never came back. Why was that?” She looked at him, surprised. “Oh, forgive me,” Dr. Mason said in a rush. “I’m so sorry. Of course. Evans. Evans died. I apologize.”

— Bonnie Garmus

176. “It was Harriet who told me to use that moment to reconnect with my own needs, to identify my true direction, to recommit.”

— Bonnie Garmus

177. “And not in who we are or what we’re made of, but rather, who we’re capable of becoming.”

— Bonnie Garmus

178. “And on those rare occasions when she wasn’t defined by others’ actions, then she was dismissed out of hand as either a lightweight or a gold digger based on the thing she hated most about herself.”

— Bonnie Garmus

179. “Besides, even if he knew every word in the English language, he still wouldn’t have any idea what to say. Because what does one say to someone who’s lost everything?”

— Bonnie Garmus

180. “Actually, when you think about it, rowing is almost exactly like raising kids. Both require patience, endurance, strength, and commitment. And neither allow us to see where we’re going – only where we’ve been. I find that.”

— Bonnie Garmus

181. “Just as people have a bad habit of dismissing others’ problems and tragedies, so too did they have a bad habit of not appreciating what they have.”

— Bonnie Garmus

182. “She’d faced tough things before. She would weather what came. But weathering is called weathering for a reason. It erodes.”

— Bonnie Garmus

183. “She would weather what came. But weathering is called weathering for a reason: it erodes.”

— Bonnie Garmus

184. “Often the best way to deal with the bad,” she said, feeling for her pencil, “is to turn it on end – use it as a strength, refuse to allow the bad thing to define you. Fight it.”

— Bonnie Garmus

185. “Cooking, like surgery, requires concentration. Anyway, Phil Lebensmal wants me to act as if the people I’m speaking to are dolts. I won’t do it, Harriet, I won’t perpetuate the myth that women are incompetent. If they cancel me, so be it. I’ll do something else.”

— Bonnie Garmus

186. “That tiny amount is mostly act-of-God stuff – earthquakes, tsunamis – things we can’t possibly anticipate because the science isn’t there yet.” She paused, straightening her belt. “Walter, don’t you find it interesting that people even use that term ‘act of God’? Considering that most want to believe that God is about lambs and love and babies in mangers, and yet this.”

— Bonnie Garmus

187. “Walter Pine had been in television from almost the very beginning.”

— Bonnie Garmus

188. “How dare you,” he said, his voice rising. “A woman telling me what pregnancy is. Who do you think you are?”

— Bonnie Garmus

189. “But Madeline had been reading since age three and, now, at age five, was already through most of Dickens.”

— Bonnie Garmus

190. “In addition to the receptive learning technique, Elizabeth had been reading aloud to him, long ago replacing simple children’s books with far weightier texts. “Reading aloud promotes brain development,” she’d told him, quoting a research study she’d read. “It also speeds vocabulary accumulation.” It seemed to be working because, according to her notebook, he now knew 391 words.”

— Bonnie Garmus

191. “Humans need reassurance, they need to know others survived in hard times. And unlike other species which do a better job of learning from their mistakes, humans require constant threats and reminders to be nice.”

— Bonnie Garmus

192. “Families required constant maintenance.”

— Bonnie Garmus

193. “As any non-rower can tell you, rowers are not fun. This is because rowers only ever want to talk about rowing.”

— Bonnie Garmus

194. “And there they were in the thick of it, the only living dead things.”

— Bonnie Garmus

195. “Why do you think so many people believe in texts written thousands of years ago? And why does it seem the more supernatural, unprovable, improbable, and ancient the source of these texts, the more people believe them?”

— Bonnie Garmus

196. “It was the seventh time that week someone felt compelled to inform her that her life was about to change and she was sick of it. She’d lost her job, her research, bladder control, a clear view of her toes, restful sleep, normal skin, a pain-free back, not to mention all the little assorted freedoms everyone else who is not pregnant takes for granted – like being able to fit behind a steering wheel. The only thing she’d gained? Weight.”

— Bonnie Garmus

197. “She was reading Madame Bovary aloud to Six-Thirty. She’d just finished telling Six-Thirty that fiction was problematic. People were always insisting they knew what it meant, even if the writer hadn’t meant that at all, and even if what they thought it meant had no actual meaning. “Bovary’s a great example,” she said. “Here, where Emma licks her fingers? Some believe it signifies carnal lust; others think she just really liked the chicken. As for what Flaubert actually meant? No one cares.”

— Bonnie Garmus

198. “We both know food is the catalyst that unlocks our brains, binds our families, and determines our futures.”

— Bonnie Garmus

199. “Smart woman,” Walter said. “I don’t have a lot of friends either.” Actually, he thought to himself, he only had one: Elizabeth Zott. And she wasn’t just a friend, she was his best friend.”

— Bonnie Garmus

200. “Chop the rosemary,” Elizabeth was saying quietly in the background, “with the sharpest knife you have. This minimizes damage to the plant and avoids excess electrolyte leakage.”

— Bonnie Garmus