Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2024 Update)
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301. “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

302. “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

303. “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

304. “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

305. “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

306. “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

307. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

309. “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

310. “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

311. “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

312. “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

313. “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

314. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

319. “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

320. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

324. “Sitting by never got anyone anywhere.”

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

328. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

330. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

332. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

335. “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

336. “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

337. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

339. “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

340. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

342. “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

343. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

347. “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

348. “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

349. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus