Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2025 Update)
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301. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

303. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

305. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

307. “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

308. “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

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 “The attack, or “unfortunate event,” as the admissions committee called it just before they formally rescinded her admittance to the doctoral program, had been her doing.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

310. “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

311. “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

312. “Family is far more than biology.”

— Bonnie Garmus

313. “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

314. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

316. “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

317. “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

318. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

320. “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

321. “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

322. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

324. “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

325. “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

326. “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

327. “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

328. “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

329. “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

330. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

332. “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

333. “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

334. “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

335. “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

336. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

341. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

343. “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

344. “What’s all this?” he finally said, pointing to her bandaged fingers. “Oh. I’m a rower. Trying to be.” “Are you any good?” “No.” “Then why are you doing it?” “I’m not sure.” He shook his head. “Boy, do I get that.”

— Bonnie Garmus

345. “Every day she found parenthood like taking a test for which she had not studied.”

— Bonnie Garmus

346. “Because what does one say to someone who’s lost everything?”

— Bonnie Garmus

347. “No wonder people didn’t understand animals. They could barely understand each other.”

— Bonnie Garmus

348. “Sitting by never got anyone anywhere.”

— Bonnie Garmus

349. “Because I can’t risk having my scientific contributions submerged beneath your name,” she clarified.”

— Bonnie Garmus

350. “Look at you – you’ve got the death row look.”

— Bonnie Garmus