Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “Because there are naked pictures?” “No!” he said. “No, no – it’s nothing like that. It’s just that sometimes I need a laugh. There’s not much humor in my job.” “Why?” The reverend hesitated. “Because God isn’t very funny, I guess.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

203. “You’re a scientist,” he said. “Your job is to question things – to search for answers. But sometimes – and I know this for a fact – there just aren’t any.”

— Bonnie Garmus

204. “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

205. “On top of his grudge holding, he had a reputation for impatience. Like so many brilliant people, Calvin just couldn’t understand how no one else got it. He was also an introvert, which isn’t really a flaw but.”

— Bonnie Garmus

206. “He’d never really considered that a family could actually be the hard times.”

— Bonnie Garmus

207. “Why aren’t you a PhD, Zott?” Frask shot back. Elizabeth hardened, and without meaning to, revealed a fact about herself that she’d never told anyone other than a police officer. “Because I was sexually violated by my thesis advisor, then kicked out of the doctoral program,” she shouted. “You?”

— Bonnie Garmus

208. “I get it,” she said, skimming a physics textbook later that day at work. “Rowing is a simple matter of kinetic energy versus boat drag and center of mass.” She jotted down a few formulas. “And gravity,” she added, “and buoyancy, ratio, speed, balance, gearing, oar length, blade type.”

— Bonnie Garmus

209. “Take a moment for yourself,′ Harriet said, ‘Every day. A moment where you are your own priority. Just you. Not your baby, not your work, not your dead Mr. Evans, not your filthy house, not anything. Just you. Elizabeth Zott. Whatever you need, whatever you want, whatever you seek, reconnect with it in that moment. Then recommit.”

— Bonnie Garmus

210. “But supper isn’t all we’ve made, ladies. We’ve also made history.”

— Bonnie Garmus

211. “Because quite often the past belongs only in the past.” “Why?” “Because the past is the only place it makes sense.”

— Bonnie Garmus

212. “I’m sorry,” he said gently, studying her face the way a meteorologist might watch a storm develop. “Please know you can talk to me. Rower to rower. It’s all confidential.”

— Bonnie Garmus

213. “In fact, most people spoke only one – maybe two – unless they were something called Swiss and spoke eight.”

— Bonnie Garmus

214. “Apparently, she tried to put in a request for The Naked and the Dead.”

— Bonnie Garmus

215. “Dr. Mason is sick of vaginas,” she’d mentioned at bedtime.”

— Bonnie Garmus

216. “Every last trace of Calvin had been scrubbed away. He watched as she stood in the middle of the room, her face blank with shock.”

— Bonnie Garmus

217. “Sometimes I understand why my brother left,” she admitted quietly. “After everything that’s happened, sometimes I feel like I want out, too.” “I get that,” Wakely said, thinking of how damaging the Life article was. “Believe me. But that’s not really your problem. It’s not that you want out.” She turned to look at him, confused. “It’s that you want back in.”

— Bonnie Garmus

218. “Oh really?” Her mother laughed. “I see. So you think you’re going to marry your work like the nuns marry Jesus? Although say what you want about nuns – at least they know their husband won’t snore.”

— Bonnie Garmus

219. “Do you hate advice givers? I do. They have a way of making one feel inadequate. And the advice is usually lousy.”

— Bonnie Garmus

220. “Harriet thought it was wrong not to believe in God. It lacked humility. In her opinion, believing in God was required, like brushing teeth or wearing underwear. Certainly, all decent people believed in God – even indecent people, like her husband, believed in God. God is why they.”

— Bonnie Garmus

221. “Some people are born bad apples,” he continued. “The result of parents who were bad themselves. But in your case, I don’t know where it comes from.” “What do you mean?” “I mean,” he said, leaning forward, “that I suspect you were born good but went bad. Rotted,” he said, “through a series of bad choices. Are you familiar with the idea that beauty comes from within?” “Yes.” “Well, your insides match your outward ugliness.” Calvin touched his swollen knuckles, trying not to cry.”

— Bonnie Garmus

222. “I don’t know what to do, he confessed to the bones below. And on top of everything else, she’s still trying to teach me words. Which was awful because he was unable to give her any hope for the future using these words. 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

223. “In her opinion, believing in God was required, like brushing teeth or wearing underwear.”

— Bonnie Garmus

224. “Elizabeth simply refused to accept limits, not just for herself, but for others.”

— Bonnie Garmus

225. “Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

227. “That’s the hydrogen bond for you, ladies – a chemical reminder that if things seem too good to be true, they probably are.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

229. “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

230. “Take a moment for yourself,” Harriet said. “Every day.”

— Bonnie Garmus

231. “He was also an introvert, which isn’t really a flaw but often manifests itself as standoffishness.”

— Bonnie Garmus

232. “Then he mentioned that erging had a way of making the worst day on the water seem pretty good.”

— Bonnie Garmus

233. “But the truth is, we are very much responsible for the badness in the world. And we have the power to fix it.” “But surely you’re not suggesting that humans can fix the universe.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

235. “Having a baby, Elizabeth realized, was a little like living with a visitor from a distant planet. There was a certain amount of give and take as the visitor learned your ways and you learned theirs, but gradually their ways faded and your ways stuck. Which she found regrettable. Because unlike adults, her visitor never tired of even the smallest discovery; always saw the magic in the extraordinary.”

— Bonnie Garmus

236. “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

237. “When a boat succeeds, it’s because the people in the boat have managed to set aside their petty differences and physical discrepancies and row as one. Perfect harmony – that was the goal. She’d once overheard Calvin telling someone at the boathouse that his Cambridge coach insisted that they even blink at the same time. To her surprise the guy nodded. “We had to file our toenails to the same length. Made a huge difference.”

— Bonnie Garmus

238. “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

239. “I was fired,” Elizabeth said, her voice filling with fury. “Thanks, in part, to women like you,” she snapped, “women who pander – ” “I do not pander – ” “Who play along – ” “I do not play along – ” “Who seem to think their self-worth is based on what a man – ” “How dare you – ” “No!” Elizabeth shouted, pounding on the thin steel panel that separated them. “How dare you, Miss Frask! How dare you!”

— Bonnie Garmus

240. “Take the helm. Steer. When in doubt, pretend.”

— Bonnie Garmus

241. “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

242. “Are you sad, honey?” Mad placed her small, chalky hands on either side of her mother’s face. “No. But you are.”

— Bonnie Garmus

243. “It was another thing Six-Thirty loved about her: her constant state of outrage.”

— Bonnie Garmus

244. “Elizabeth shook her head. “Our future happiness does not depend on whether or not we’re married, Calvin – at least not to me. I’m fully committed to you; marriage will not change that. As for who thinks what, it’s not just a handful of people: it’s society – particularly the society of scientific research. Everything I do will suddenly be in your name, as if you’d done.”

— Bonnie Garmus

245. “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

246. “Say what you want about the human race, their capacity for kindness was what – in Six-Thirty’s opinion – put them over the top, species-wise.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

248. “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

249. “Elizabeth Zott,” she said, moving past the stork to the receptionist. “For Dr. Mason.” “You’re late,” the receptionist said icily. “I’m five minutes early,” Elizabeth corrected, checking her watch. “There’s paperwork,” the woman informed her, handing over a clipboard. Husband’s place of work. Husband’s telephone number. Husband’s insurance. Husband’s age. Husband’s bank account number. “Who’s having the baby here?” she asked.”

— Bonnie Garmus

250. “Because as a producer, he was part of Phil’s management team, and that meant he was responsible for pushing Phil’s agenda while ignoring those who ultimately paid the price for.”

— Bonnie Garmus