Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

153. “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

154. “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

155. “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

156. “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

157. “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

158. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

160. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

162. “One thing I’ve learned, Calvin: people will always yearn for a simple solution to their complicated problems.”

— Bonnie Garmus

163. “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

164. “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

165. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

167. “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

168. “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

169. “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

170. “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

171. “Just like after her brother’s suicide and Meyers’s attack, she could not cry. An army of tears lay just behind her eyes, but they refused to decamp.”

— Bonnie Garmus

172. “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

173. “Families required constant maintenance.”

— Bonnie Garmus

174. “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

175. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

177. “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

178. “It is not an exaggeration to say that when Elizabeth Zott finished cooking, an entire nation sat down to eat.”

— Bonnie Garmus

179. “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

180. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

182. “It’s just that we tend to treat pregnancy as the most common condition in the world – as ordinary as stubbing a toe – when the truth is, it’s like getting hit by a truck. Although obviously a truck causes less damage.”

— Bonnie Garmus

183. “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

184. “Because while musical prodigies are always celebrated, early readers aren’t.”

— Bonnie Garmus

185. “Pregnancy is a normal condition. It is not disgraceful. It is how every human being starts.” “How dare you,” he said, his voice rising. “A woman telling me what pregnancy is. Who do you think you are?” She seemed surprised by the question. “A woman,” she said.”

— Bonnie Garmus

186. “They lay silently, both wading in the misery of their pasts.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

190. “It’s me, Miss Zott. Mrs. Sloane. I peeked in and saw you slumped on the floor. I knocked and knocked but you didn’t respond, so I pushed open the door. I wanted to make sure you’re all right.”

— Bonnie Garmus

191. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

194. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

198. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

200. “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