Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “They lay silently, both wading in the misery of their pasts.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

156. “Everyone dies,” Mad pointed out. “But not everyone pays their taxes.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

158. “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

159. “Imagine if all men took women seriously. Education would change.”

— Bonnie Garmus

160. “According to Harriet, men were a world apart from women. They required coddling, they had fragile egos, they couldn’t allow a woman intelligence or skill if it exceeded their own.”

— Bonnie Garmus

161. “When it came to equality, 1952 was a real disappointment.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

163. “Elizabeth continued to sit silently. Against her better judgment, she felt herself warming to the idea. She didn’t want to: she didn’t like the notion that systems had to be outsmarted. Why couldn’t they just be smart in the first place? And she certainly didn’t like favors. Favors smacked of cheating. And yet she had goals, and dammit, why should she just sit by? Sitting by never got anyone anywhere.”

— Bonnie Garmus

164. “Because unlike adults, her visitor never tired of even the smallest discovery; always saw the magic in the ordinary.”

— Bonnie Garmus

165. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

167. “The results didn’t matter at all. Amanda was his daughter and he was her father. He loved her with all his heart. Biology was overrated.”

— Bonnie Garmus

168. “Yes, living with Mr. Sloane was revolting, but Harriet was not completely repelled by his physical defects – she shed herself. Rather, it was his low-grade stupidity she abhorred – his dull, opinionated, know-nothing charmless complexion; his ignorance, bigotry, vulgarity, insensitivity; and above all, his wholly undeserved faith in himself. Like most stupid people, Mr. Sloane wasn’t smart enough to know just how stupid he was.”

— Bonnie Garmus

169. “And when you were their age you envisioned yourself becoming – ” “A loving wife and mother.” “No, seriously – ” “An open-heart surgeon,” the woman said before she.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

171. “And the fact that she pretends to be Madeline’s friend to get her lunch,” she continued, “is absolutely reprehensible.” “Wh-who are you again?” stammered Walter. “Elizabeth Zott!” she barked back. “Madeline Zott’s mother!” Walter nodded, trying to understand. As a longtime producer of afternoon television, he knew drama. But this? He continued to stare. She was stunning. He was literally stunned by her. Was she auditioning for something.”

— Bonnie Garmus

172. “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.”

— Bonnie Garmus

173. “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

174. “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

175. “I wanted to know about your relationship with Evans.” “How is that your business?” Again, he felt the weight of the dog’s eyes on him. I have mapped and memorized the location of your carotid artery.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

177. “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

178. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

180. “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

181. “There was a lot of shop talk from the others about how chemical bonds were formed, broken, then re-formed following something called an “effective collision.”

— Bonnie Garmus

182. “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

183. “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

184. “Really?” she said, surprised. “I think it lets us off the hook. I think it teaches us that nothing is really our fault; that something or someone else is pulling the strings; that ultimately, we’re not to blame for the way things are; that to improve things, we should pray. But the truth is, we are very much responsible for.”

— Bonnie Garmus

185. “Elizabeth once read that 98 percent of the things people worry about never come true. But what, she wondered, about the 2 percent that do? And who came up with that figure? Two percent seemed suspiciously low. She’d believe 10 percent – even 20. In her own life it was probably closer to 50.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

187. “That’s when someone in the audience asked for an example of an ineffective collision – something that lacked energy and never changed, but still had a big effect. Evans had leaned into his microphone. “Religion,” he said. Then he got up and left.”

— Bonnie Garmus

188. “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

189. “One would think the ignorant would die off sooner,” Elizabeth continued. “But Darwin overlooked the fact that the ignorant rarely forget to eat.”

— Bonnie Garmus

190. “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

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. “There’s nothing more irritating than witnessing someone else’s unfair share of happiness, and to some of their colleagues at Hastings Research Institute, Elizabeth and Calvin had an unfair share. He, because he was brilliant; she, because she was beautiful. When they became a couple, their unfair shares automatically doubled, making it really unfair.”

— Bonnie Garmus

194. “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

195. “I’m an atheist, Mr. Roth,” she said, sighing heavily. “Actually, a humanist.”

— Bonnie Garmus

196. “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

197. “Mrs. Mudford. Room six. I realize she might be a little more advanced than some of the other children, but I doubt she’ll be the only one reading Zane Grey, don’t you?”

— Bonnie Garmus

198. “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.” Avery Parker, her face suddenly familiar with Calvin’s smile, turned back and took Elizabeth’s hands in her own. “The whole family,” she said.”

— Bonnie Garmus

199. “Because humans are animals. Technically. Although sometimes I think the animals we consider animals are far more advanced than the animals we are but don’t consider ourselves to be.”

— Bonnie Garmus

200. “Meyers was also famous for being a lecher.”

— Bonnie Garmus