Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “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 She did not care for people who made assumptions based on what she felt were long-outdated visual clues, and she also didn’t care for men who believed, even if she had been a secretary, that being a secretary meant she was incapable of understanding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

252. “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

253. “When we make food, we don’t just create something good to eat – we create something that provides energy to our cells, something that sustains life.”

— Bonnie Garmus

254. “But weathering is called weathering for a reason: it erodes.”

— Bonnie Garmus

255. “Neither of them had wanted children, and Elizabeth still fervently believed that no woman should be forced to have a baby. Yet here she was, a single mother, the lead scientist on what had to be the most unscientific experiment of all time: the raising of another human being.”

— Bonnie Garmus

256. “Family is far more than biology.”

— Bonnie Garmus

257. “And even if we took all the proper legal steps to ensure my name won’t change, it will still change. Everyone will call me Mrs. Calvin Evans; I will become Mrs. Calvin Evans. Every Christmas card, every bank statement, every notice from the Bureau of Internal Revenue will all come to Mr.”

— Bonnie Garmus

258. “It was the same for Elizabeth. She sensed that Six-Thirty had also suffered beyond the usual dog-left-by-the-roadside neglect, and she, too, felt the need to protect him.”

— Bonnie Garmus

259. “No one’s fine with a newborn, Miss Zott. The little gremlin will suck the life right out of you.”

— Bonnie Garmus

260. “I’ve already got a bunch of temp typing jobs lined up. But before I leave, I have a little present for you. Something to make up for all the grief I caused after Mr. Evans died. Why don’t you meet me on Friday at the south elevator. Four o’clock. I promise you won’t be disappointed.”

— Bonnie Garmus

261. “He thought about the people who designed these dresses; how, like bomb manufacturers or pornography stars, they had to remain vague about the way they made their livings.”

— Bonnie Garmus

262. “I see,” Wakely said, slowly unraveling her guilt. “Your brother saved you – so you think you should have been able to save him. Is that it?” She turned to look at him, her face hollow. “But Elizabeth, you couldn’t swim – that’s why he jumped in after you. You have to understand, suicide isn’t like that. Suicide is lot more complicated.” “Wakely,” she said. “He didn’t know how to swim either.”

— Bonnie Garmus

263. “He’d stared at the test results, expecting to feel cheated or devastated or any of the other ways he’d guessed he was supposed to feel, but instead he’d felt completely nonplussed. 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

264. “The bishop had forced himself to take the check without looking at it, but once Wilson was out the door, he laid the slip of paper flat on his desk. Nice chunk of change. And more to come, thanks to his idea to create a memorial fund for someone who wasn’t even dead yet. He leaned back in his chair and laced his fingers across his chest. If anyone needed any further proof of God’s existence, they need look no further. All Saints: the place where God actually did help those who helped themselves.”

— Bonnie Garmus

265. “Calvin smiled to himself. It was a side of Elizabeth he’d never seen before: a mothering instinct.”

— Bonnie Garmus

266. “No,” he said. “What I meant was, I think you might benefit from steno school – dictation. I found a correspondence course for you,” he said, handing her a brochure. “The beauty is, you could do it at home in your free time.”

— Bonnie Garmus

267. “Out of the corner of his eye he spied some bills and made a mental note to file the latest crop of flimflam correspondence. He’d gotten yet another letter from the woman claiming to be his mother – They told me you’d died, she always wrote.”

— Bonnie Garmus

268. “You’re saying that if an unmarried man makes an unmarried woman pregnant, there is no consequence for him. His life goes on. Business as usual.”

— Bonnie Garmus

269. “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

270. “Naked and the Dead.”

— Bonnie Garmus

271. “She’d felt this way her entire life. She’d been defined not by what she did, but by what others had done... she was never just Elizabeth Zott.”

— Bonnie Garmus

272. “But you realize,” she said carefully, as if not to embarrass him further, “that faith isn’t based on religion. Right?”

— Bonnie Garmus

273. “Don’t even get me started on pay. And all because they didn’t attend a school that wouldn’t admit them in the first place.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

275. “Oh right,” Frask mocked. “Same old song. I’d heard the investor came back, and shazam! Here you are. I’ll say one thing for you: you’re predictable. At least you’re chasing a richer man this time. Although, between us, isn’t he a bit old for you?”

— Bonnie Garmus

276. “That’s one of the things we mean when we say it’s a free country. People are welcome to believe whatever they want as long as their beliefs don’t hurt others.”

— Bonnie Garmus

277. “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

278. “While some couples’ togetherness tends to affect their work in a negative way, it was just the opposite for Elizabeth and Calvin. They were working even when they weren’t working – fueling each other’s creativity and inventiveness with a new point of view – and while the scientific community would later marvel at their productivity, they probably would have marveled even more had they realized most of it was done naked.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

280. “I think we both know,” Walter said through gritted teeth, “that God is just a bit different from Yahtzee.” “Agreed,” Elizabeth said. “Yahtzee is fun.”

— Bonnie Garmus

281. “And then there was the illogical art of female friendship itself, the way it seemed to demand an ability to both keep and reveal secrets using precise timing.”

— Bonnie Garmus

282. “Still, one of the panelists continued to drone on about how real change only ever arose through the application of kinetic energy. 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

283. “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

284. “Your job is to question things – to search for answers. But sometimes – and I know this for a fact – there just aren’t any. You know that prayer that starts.”

— Bonnie Garmus

285. “Humans need reassurance,” Wakely wrote back. “They need to know others survived the hard times.”

— Bonnie Garmus

286. “The only real issue with these people, besides the occasional hygiene challenge, was that they always seemed to embrace failure as a positive outcome. “I have not failed,” they’d endlessly quote Edison, “I’ve just found ten thousand ways that won’t work.” Which may be an acceptable thing to say in science but is absolutely the wrong thing to say to a roomful of investors looking for an immediate, high-ticket, chronic treatment for cancer.”

— Bonnie Garmus

287. “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

288. “Although she was only almost four, Mad was already bigger than most five-year-olds and could read better than many sixth graders. But despite these physical and intellectual strides, just like her antisocial mother and grudge-holding father, she had few friends.”

— Bonnie Garmus

289. “They either wanted to control her, touch her, dominate her, silence her, correct her, or tell her what to do. She didn’t understand why they couldn’t just treat her as a fellow human being, as a colleague, a friend, an equal, or even a stranger on the street, someone to whom one is automatically respectful until you find out they’ve buried a bunch of bodies in the backyard.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

291. “Miss Frask, now age thirty-three, who, for the last four years, had dutifully followed every path promising promotion – from overselling Hastings’s benefits, to spying on specific departments, to authoring an in-house gossip column called “You Heard It Here First.”

— Bonnie Garmus

292. “He’d been officiating a funeral just last week – one of his congregants had died of lung cancer – and his message to the family, all of whom also smoked like chimneys, was that the man had died, not because of his four-pack-a-day habit, but because God needed him. The family, each inhaling deeply, thanked him for his wisdom.”

— Bonnie Garmus

293. “By the way, how’s the lab tech job going? Suicidal yet?”

— Bonnie Garmus

294. “Obviously, she had to go; no question about it. Hastings Research Institute had standards.”

— Bonnie Garmus

295. “And then they looked at one another as if to confirm what they had already long suspected: Americans were idiots.”

— Bonnie Garmus

296. “To protect your villagers from certain death, always slash.”

— Bonnie Garmus

297. “Do you keep secrets?” “Yes,” he admitted. “How about you?” “Me too,” she said. “I’m pretty sure everyone does,” he said. “Especially the people who say they don’t. There’s no way you go through life without being embarrassed or ashamed about something.”

— Bonnie Garmus

298. “She ended every show with her signature line: “Children, set the table. Your mother needs a moment to herself.”

— Bonnie Garmus

299. “The animals we consider animals are far more advanced than the animals we are but don’t consider ourselves to be.”

— Bonnie Garmus

300. “Calvin turned his head to the left, trying to disguise his disappointment. In that moment, he realized how much he’d wanted to meet her family-how much he’d hoped to sit at a Thanksgiving table, surrounded by people who would finally be his because he was hers.”

— Bonnie Garmus