Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2024 Update)
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201. “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

202. “Mrs. Sloane lifted her hands. “Well, Elizabeth, I’m Harriet.” And then there was an awkward silence, as if by sharing their names, they’d each revealed more than they’d planned.”

— Bonnie Garmus

203. “But really it was because of Mr. Sloane. He’d been drinking more and swearing more and the only way she knew how to deal with it was to stay away.”

— Bonnie Garmus

204. “Or perhaps your marriage is more of a covalent bond,” she said, sketching a new structural formula. “And if so, lucky you, because that means you both have strengths that, when combined, create something even better.”

— Bonnie Garmus

205. “Anyway, no one else knew how mad she was; she’d kept it to herself. Well, except during labor, when she might have shouted some regrettable things, her fingernails possibly digging into some unknown person’s forearm as the bigger contractions took hold. She remembered someone besides herself shrieking and swearing. It seemed strange and unprofessional.”

— Bonnie Garmus

206. “There’s no way you go through life without being embarrassed or ashamed about something.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

208. “Ever since you brought your little Satan home, I’ve told myself, Go by and check on her.”

— Bonnie Garmus

209. “Do you know how extraordinary that is?” she said. “That a man would treat his lover’s work as seriously as his own?”

— Bonnie Garmus

210. “There will be other men, Miss Zott. Maybe not as famous or as influential as Mr. Evans, but men all the same.”

— Bonnie Garmus

211. “Science has big problems to solve: famine, disease, extinction. And those who purposefully close the door to others using self-serving, outdated cultural notions are not only dishonest, they’re knowingly lazy.”

— Bonnie Garmus

212. “But then you talk and discover he’s a closet Nazi and thinks women complain too much.”

— Bonnie Garmus

213. “She was going to do something so revolutionary, so necessary, that her name – despite a never-ending legion of naysayers – would be immortalized.”

— Bonnie Garmus

214. “The bank manager was grim in his assessment of her situation. “Things will only get worse,” he warned. “As soon as your child is old enough, get her in school. Then find a job that actually pays. Or marry rich.”

— Bonnie Garmus

215. “When she was in labor and in horrific pain, convinced the baby was snatching her internal organs like suitcases as if to ensure she’d have plenty to wear on the outside, she screamed so violently the bed frame shook.”

— Bonnie Garmus

216. “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

217. “I can’t believe we’re fired,” he continued. “I mean, we have a hit show on our hands and we’re fired?” Elizabeth looked at him with concern. “No, Walter,” she said slowly. “We’re not fired. We’re in charge.”

— Bonnie Garmus

218. “Politicians don’t make it easy, do they?”

— Bonnie Garmus

219. “The stories were short, memorable, and covered all the bases of love, pride, folly, and forgiveness. Their rules were bite-sized: Don’t be a jerk. Don’t hurt other people or animals. Share what you have with others less fortunate. In other words, be nice.”

— Bonnie Garmus

220. “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

221. “I’ve always wrapped my shows by telling your children to set the table so that you might have a moment for yourself. ‘A moment for yourself’ – that was the advice Harriet Sloane gave me the first day I met her, and that is the advice that has resulted in my decision to leave Supper at Six. 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

222. “That’s just Calvin. He doesn’t like to run in place in ballet slippers.”

— Bonnie Garmus

223. “Who didn’t want to dip into the deep end of someone else’s childhood and meet all the usual suspects – the strict parent, the competitive siblings, the crazy aunt?”

— Bonnie Garmus

224. “He’d never been one for self-improvement – never even gotten through Dale Carnegie’s book about making friends and influencing people because ten pages in he realized he didn’t care what anyone else thought.”

— Bonnie Garmus

225. “The I-hate-people gene?” Harriet said. “There is one?”

— Bonnie Garmus

226. “You have a lot of nerve,” Donatti said. “You know very well women do not continue to work when pregnant.”

— Bonnie Garmus

227. “Mad, I need you to understand something,” he said, noting, with shock, that his own hands were in the photograph. “Families aren’t meant to fit on trees. Maybe because people aren’t part of the plant kingdom – we’re part of the animal kingdom.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

229. “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

230. “Calvin was a brilliant man, but if he had one flaw, it was his ability to hold a grudge.”

— Bonnie Garmus

231. “But people need to believe in something bigger than themselves.”

— Bonnie Garmus

232. “I’m a specialist in human behavior,” she said. “At one point I was pursuing a PhD in psychology.” She looked at her lunch mates, hoping they’d ask her about her academic aspirations, but no one seemed even slightly interested. “Anyway, that’s why I can say with confidence: it’s she who’s using him.”

— Bonnie Garmus

233. “Having a baby, Elizabeth realized, was a little like living with a visitor from a distant planet.”

— Bonnie Garmus

234. “It wasn’t that he was writing anything terrible about her – just the opposite. Rather, it was more that he couldn’t risk having her discover that he was obsessed with the notion that she might die.”

— Bonnie Garmus

235. “Both require patience, endurance, strength, and commitment. And neither allow us to see where we’re going – only where we’ve been.”

— Bonnie Garmus

236. “She’d recently read about some country where both parents worked and took part in raising the children. Where was that, again? Sweden? She couldn’t remember. But the upshot was, it functioned very well. Productivity was higher; families were stronger.”

— Bonnie Garmus

237. “When I was a kid,” Calvin said quietly, “I used to tell myself every day was new. That anything could happen.”

— Bonnie Garmus

238. “As soon as Mad could walk, Elizabeth encouraged her to touch, taste, toss, bounce, burn, rip, spill, shake, mix, splatter, sniff, and lick nearly everything she encountered.”

— Bonnie Garmus

239. “Someone would write her a recommendation. Go. That’s how she’d ended up at Hastings Research Institute.”

— Bonnie Garmus

240. “The other day she’d suggested they make mud pies and Mad frowned, then wrote 3.1415 with a stick in the dirt. “Done,” she’d said.”

— Bonnie Garmus

241. “No. You need to understand this, Calvin. People like my father preach love but are filled with hate. Anyone.”

— Bonnie Garmus

242. “But she had learned that underemployment was worse. Not only did her paycheck reflect her lowly status, but her brain hurt from inactivity.”

— Bonnie Garmus

243. “The truth is, I’m not good with children,” he’d told the archbishop. “Widows, prostitutes – that’s where I really shine.”

— Bonnie Garmus

244. “Edna Flattistein asked me a direct question and I answered it. I’m glad she feels she can express her belief in God and I welcome her right to do so. But I should be extended the same courtesy. Plenty of people don’t believe in God.”

— Bonnie Garmus

245. “Your dad was very famous – I’m sure you know that. And now your mom is, too.” “Because of Life,” the child said, hanging her head. “No,” Frask said firmly. “In spite of it.”

— Bonnie Garmus

246. “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

247. “Although, honestly, if she’d been able to ask her dead father anything it would have been how he’d felt the first time he saw her mother. Was it love at first sight?”

— Bonnie Garmus

248. “The attack, or “unfortunate event,” as the admissions committee called it just before they formally rescinded her admittance to the doctoral program, had been her doing. Dr. Meyers had caught her cheating.”

— Bonnie Garmus

249. “I’m referring to atoms and molecules, Roth,” she explained. “The real rules that govern the physical world. When women understand these basic concepts, they can begin to see the false limits that have been created for them.”

— Bonnie Garmus

250. “Because she says exactly what she thinks,” Walter said. “Which is very rare. But also because the food she makes is very, very good. And because everyone seems to want to learn chemistry. Oddly.”

— Bonnie Garmus