Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “Still, he sensed that most people did not listen to their dogs. This was called ignoring. Or wait, no. Ignorance.”

— Bonnie Garmus

252. “We can learn more, we can go further, but to accomplish this, we must throw open the doors.”

— Bonnie Garmus

253. “The only excitement had come at the beginning but it had worn off like cheap nail polish.”

— Bonnie Garmus

254. “And there they were in the thick of it, the only living dead things.”

— Bonnie Garmus

255. “Harriet, that’s ridiculous,” Elizabeth had argued. “Men and women are both human beings. And as humans, we’re by-products of our upbringings, victims of our lackluster educational systems, and choosers of our behaviors. In short, the reduction of women to something less than men, and the elevation of men to something more than women, is not biological: it’s cultural. And it starts with two words: pink and blue. Everything skyrockets out of control from there.”

— Bonnie Garmus

256. “I used to tell myself every day was new. That anything could happen.”

— Bonnie Garmus

257. “Why do you think so many people believe in texts written thousands of years ago? And why does it seem the more supernatural, unprovable, improbable, and ancient the source of these texts, the more people believe them?”

— Bonnie Garmus

258. “People like my father preach love, but are filled with hate. Anyone who threatens their narrow beliefs can not be tolerated. They day my Mother caught my brother holding hands with another boy, that was it. After a year of hearing he was an aberration and didn’t deserve to live, he went out to the shed with a rope.”

— Bonnie Garmus

259. “If there’s a truism in journalism, it’s this: it’s only when the reporter stops asking that the subject starts telling.”

— Bonnie Garmus

260. “They’re not missing, Calvin,” the priest said. “They’ve been removed.” “Why?” “Because they’re wrong, that’s why. Now open your books to page one hundred nineteen, boys. We’ll start with – ” “Evolution’s missing,” Calvin persisted, riffling through the pages.”

— Bonnie Garmus

261. “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

262. “And on those rare occasions when she wasn’t defined by others’ actions, then she was dismissed out of hand as either a lightweight or a gold digger based on the thing she hated most about herself.”

— Bonnie Garmus

263. “She knew being mad at him was unfair, but grief is like that: arbitrary.”

— Bonnie Garmus

264. “Your relatives can’t make you important or smart. They can’t make you you.” “What makes me me, then?” “What you choose to do. How you live your life.”

— Bonnie Garmus

265. “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

266. “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

267. “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

268. “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

269. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

271. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

274. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

276. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

278. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

280. “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

281. “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

282. “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

283. “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

284. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

286. “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

287. “Family is far more than biology.”

— Bonnie Garmus

288. “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

289. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

291. “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

292. “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

293. “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

294. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

296. “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

297. “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

298. “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

299. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus