Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “It was a well-known fact that humans believed they were the most intelligent species on earth, and yet they were the only animals that willingly inhaled carcinogens.”

— Bonnie Garmus

302. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

306. “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

307. “Sitting by never got anyone anywhere.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

309. “That’s how it was with some scientists. They believe in science right up until it happens to them.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

311. “You know what?” Elizabeth said, meeting Six-Thirty on the stairs just outside the building. “We’ll just keep this between ourselves. She’s legally Mad, but we’ll call her Madeline and no one will be the wiser.” Legally Mad, Six-Thirty thought. What could possibly go wrong?”

— Bonnie Garmus

312. “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

313. “Everyone needed help. But maybe because she’d never been offered any, she refused to believe in it.”

— Bonnie Garmus

314. “Humans need reassurance,” Wakely wrote back. “They need to know others survived the hard times. And, unlike other species, which do a better job of learning from their mistakes, humans require constant threats and reminders to be nice. You know how we say, ‘People never learn?’ It’s because they never do. But religious texts try to keep them on track.”

— Bonnie Garmus

315. “He would tell about her, but not tell on her.”

— Bonnie Garmus

316. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

318. “She once overheard a woman in the park saying she wished Reader’s Digest would condense the Bible, and Harriet found herself thinking, Yes – and marriages.”

— Bonnie Garmus

319. “I’m surprised by how many women sign up for motherhood considering how difficult pregnancy can be – morning sickness, stretch marks, death. Again, you’re fine,” he added quickly, taking in her horrified face. “It’s just that we tend to treat pregnancy as the most common condition in the world – as ordinary as stubbing a toe – when the truth is, it’s like getting hit by a truck. Although obviously a truck causes less damage.”

— Bonnie Garmus

320. “Honey,” Elizabeth said. “I don’t understand. Why did this upset you? Mr. Roth did a good job. It’s a good article. I’m not mad at you; I’m glad you read it. He wrote something truthful about me and these other women and I very much hope this gets published. Somewhere.”

— Bonnie Garmus

321. “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

322. “Some people think you can’t miss what you never had, but I think you can.”

— Bonnie Garmus

323. “The reverend rubbed the back of his neck. In his experience, these homes were staffed with pedophiles.”

— Bonnie Garmus

324. “The next day – Tuesday – Mudford’s tree assignment revelations were the talk of the school: Madeline had been born out of wedlock; Amanda didn’t have a mother; Tommy Dixon’s father was an alcoholic. Not that any of the children themselves cared about these facts, but Mudford, her mean eyes wet with excitement, ate up the data like a hungry virus, then fed it to the other mothers, who spread it around school like frosting.”

— Bonnie Garmus

325. “I fell in love with Calvin,” she was saying, “because he was intelligent and kind, but also because he was the very first man to take me seriously. Imagine if all men took women seriously. Education would change. The workforce would revolutionize. Marriage counselors would go out of business.”

— Bonnie Garmus

326. “He doesn’t scare me, he disgusts me.”

— Bonnie Garmus

327. “But now he had her and tomorrow she’d be in close proximity to an altar and he hypothesized such proximity could revise her perception of marriage. This theory even had a scientific name: associative interference. “No,” she said quickly.”

— Bonnie Garmus

328. “All dogs have the ability to bite,” she said over her shoulder. “Just as all humans have the ability to cause harm. The trick is to act in a reasonable way so that harm becomes unnecessary.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

330. “When faced with a serious problem, he’d found it helped to eat.”

— Bonnie Garmus

331. “Elizabeth shook her head. When it came to equality, 1952 was a real disappointment.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

334. “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

335. “The problem with being a minister was how many times a day he had to lie.”

— Bonnie Garmus

336. “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

337. “When one is raised on a steady diet of sorrow, it’s hard to imagine that others might have had an even larger serving.”

— Bonnie Garmus

338. “What a coincidence,” she shouted as she went straight over to a shelf and helped herself to a large box of beakers. “I’m busy too.” Then she marched out.”

— Bonnie Garmus

339. “Later, in her dressing room, Rosa, the hairdresser and makeup woman, stopped by to say goodbye. “For the record, I liked the hair pencil.”

— Bonnie Garmus

340. “That had to be a special brand of bravery, for a child to endure the worst, and despite every law in the universe and all evidence to the contrary, decide the next day might be better.”

— Bonnie Garmus

341. “Look, I realize this may be hard for you to fathom given your own terrible circumstances, but while we may be born into families, it doesn’t necessarily mean we belong to them.”

— Bonnie Garmus

342. “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.”

— Bonnie Garmus

343. “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

344. “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 ‘God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can’t change’?”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

346. “Sorry, Donatti, she said, handing him a pen. “You’re just not smart enough.”

— Bonnie Garmus

347. “I don’t have hopes,” Mad explained, studying the address. “I have faith.”

— Bonnie Garmus

348. “Just like after her brother’s suicide and Meyers’s attack, she could not cry.”

— Bonnie Garmus

349. “Still, he was a child, and as children do, he held onto his hope long after the hope should have expired.”

— Bonnie Garmus

350. “Support?” Elizabeth said. “But I’m a chemist, not a lab tech.” “No, you’re a lab tech,” Donatti said firmly. “You’ve been out of the game for a while now. Surely you didn’t think you could just waltz in here and get your old job back – not after years of thumb twiddling. But here’s the deal – work hard and we’ll see.”

— Bonnie Garmus