Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “Harriet thought it was wrong not to believe in God. It lacked humility. In her opinion, believing in God was required, like brushing teeth or wearing underwear. Certainly, all decent people believed in God – even indecent people, like her husband, believed in God. God is why they.”

— Bonnie Garmus

352. “After she left, Calvin clasped his hands together in a silent fit of glee and flipped on the hi-fi, dropping the needle on “Sunny Side of the Street.” For a second time, he’d saved the person he loved the most, and the best part was, she didn’t know.”

— Bonnie Garmus

353. “Some people are born bad apples,” he continued. “The result of parents who were bad themselves. But in your case, I don’t know where it comes from.” “What do you mean?” “I mean,” he said, leaning forward, “that I suspect you were born good but went bad. Rotted,” he said, “through a series of bad choices. Are you familiar with the idea that beauty comes from within?” “Yes.” “Well, your insides match your outward ugliness.” Calvin touched his swollen knuckles, trying not to cry.”

— Bonnie Garmus

354. “I don’t know what to do, he confessed to the bones below. And on top of everything else, she’s still trying to teach me words. Which was awful because he was unable to give her any hope for the future using these words. Besides, even if he knew every word in the English language, he still wouldn’t have any idea what to say. Because what does one say to someone who’s lost everything?”

— Bonnie Garmus

355. “By the way and in case anyone was interested, he’d just learned a new word: “diary.” It was a place where one wrote vicious things about one’s family and friends and hoped to god they never saw.”

— Bonnie Garmus

356. “Hello, Edna,” she said, “and thanks for your question. The answer is no; I don’t have a favorite grace. In fact, I don’t say grace at all.”

— Bonnie Garmus

357. “Worse, Elizabeth explained, many of these women passed such notions down to their children, using phrases like “Boys will be boys” or “You know how girls are.”

— Bonnie Garmus

358. “That’s the hydrogen bond for you, ladies – a chemical reminder that if things seem too good to be true, they probably are.”

— Bonnie Garmus

359. “We’ve accomplished a lot together in the last two years. Hundreds of meals, if you can believe that. But supper isn’t all we’ve made, ladies. We’ve also made history.”

— Bonnie Garmus

360. “But Madeline had been reading since age three and, now, at age five, was already through most of Dickens.”

— Bonnie Garmus

361. “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

362. “Only Mr. Sloane was ugly, and that was because he was unattractive on the inside. In.”

— Bonnie Garmus

363. “How dare you,” he said, his voice rising. “A woman telling me what pregnancy is. Who do you think you are?” She seemed surprised by the question. “A woman,” she said.”

— Bonnie Garmus

364. “When she said “it,” he wasn’t sure what she meant. Had she been fired for killing her lover? Or for being an unwed mother? Both explanations were plausible, but he far preferred the second one.”

— Bonnie Garmus

365. “Imagine if all men took women seriously.”

— Bonnie Garmus

366. “She was like a practical priest, someone to whom one could confess things – fears, hopes, mistakes – and expect in return, not a simpleton’s recipe for prayers and beads, or a psychologist’s standard “And how does that make you feel?” runaround, but actual wisdom. How to get on with the business at hand. How to survive.”

— Bonnie Garmus

367. “Kim was too short. And then he thought, What about Madeline? Elizabeth had read him Remembrance of Things Past – he couldn’t really recommend it – but he had understood that one part. The part about the madeleine. The biscuit. Madeline Zott? Why not?”

— Bonnie Garmus

368. “Design your own future. When you go home today, ask yourself what you will change. And then get started.”

— Bonnie Garmus

369. “Elizabeth harangued about women accepting their subordinate positions as if they were preordained, as if they believed their smaller bodies were a biological indication of smaller brains, as if they were naturally inferior, but charmingly so.”

— Bonnie Garmus

370. “Don’t you know how being fired works? Step one: never tell anyone the truth – claim you won the lottery, inherited a cattle ranch in Wyoming, got a huge offer in New York, that sort of thing. Step two: drink to excess until you figure out what to do. Jesus. It’s like you’re not familiar with TV’s tribal ways!”

— Bonnie Garmus

371. “You’ve never forgiven yourself,” Wakely finally said. “But it’s him you have to forgive. What you need to do is accept.”

— Bonnie Garmus

372. “What a pretty picture!” he heard a mother say earlier that week as she looked down on her child’s ugly, violent scribble. Human parents, he’d noted, had a tendency to lie to their children.”

— Bonnie Garmus

373. “Truth was, he wasn’t making much headway with her anyway. She’d steadily refused to yield to his repeated “you’re not smart” put-downs. No matter how many times he said it, she hadn’t once responded in the proper fashion. Where was the low self-esteem? Where were the tears?”

— Bonnie Garmus

374. “Do surgeons smile during appendectomies? No. Would you want them to? No. Cooking, like surgery, requires concentration.”

— Bonnie Garmus

375. “People like my father preach love but are filled with hate. Anyone who threatens their narrow beliefs cannot be tolerated.”

— Bonnie Garmus

376. “When I was a kid,” Calvin said quietly, “I used to tell myself every day was new. That anything could happen.” She took his hand again. “Did it help?” His mouth sagged as he remembered what the bishop at the boys home had revealed to him about his father. “I guess I’m just saying we shouldn’t let ourselves get stuck in the past.”

— Bonnie Garmus

377. “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.”

— Bonnie Garmus

378. “Anyway, people think they know more about themselves based on these silly branches full of names of people they’ve never met. For instance, I know someone who’s very proud to be a direct descendant of Galileo, and another who can trace her roots back to the Mayflower. They both talk about their lineage as if they have a pedigree, but they don’t. Your relatives can’t make you important or smart. They can’t make you you.”

— Bonnie Garmus

379. “She’d hate it if she knew how much he worried and fussed, so he kept it to himself. But how could he not fuss over the person he loved more than anything, more than seemed even possible?”

— Bonnie Garmus

380. “But being a housewife and mother wasn’t really a job, was it? More like a role.”

— Bonnie Garmus

381. “And yet I still use the skin, not only because it’s fiber rich, but because it serves as a daily reminder that in potatoes as in life, danger is everywhere. The best strategy is not to fear the danger, but respect it.”

— Bonnie Garmus

382. “It’s classic neurogenic deprivation,” Elizabeth said, nodding. “The brain doesn’t get the rest it needs, resulting in a drop in executive function and accompanied by an increase in corticosterone levels.”

— Bonnie Garmus

383. “He was also an introvert, which isn’t really a flaw but often manifests itself as standoffishness.”

— Bonnie Garmus

384. “A mother and a scientist,” she said, brushing sawdust off her sleeve. “You’re a father, aren’t you? A father and a scientist.”

— Bonnie Garmus

385. “Then he mentioned that erging had a way of making the worst day on the water seem pretty good.”

— Bonnie Garmus

386. “But the truth is, we are very much responsible for the badness in the world. And we have the power to fix it.” “But surely you’re not suggesting that humans can fix the universe.”

— Bonnie Garmus

387. “Most of the women she’d met in college claimed they were only there to get their MRS. It was disconcerting, as if they’d all drunk something that had rendered them temporarily insane.”

— Bonnie Garmus

388. “It was on their honeymoon that he’d first masturbated to girlie magazines right next to her in bed.”

— Bonnie Garmus

389. “She had neither the education nor the experience of the others. She not only lacked their credentials but their papers, peer support, financial backing, and awards. And yet, she knew – she knew – she was onto something. Some people were born to things; she was one of those people.”

— Bonnie Garmus

390. “And now, here was this little girl claiming to be his daughter. God really did move in mysterious ways.”

— Bonnie Garmus

391. “But my dad isn’t in the past. He’s still my dad.”

— Bonnie Garmus

392. “She was stiff, unforgiving. Truth be told, he felt a little sorry for her. No one turned this mean without having been a victim of the same.”

— Bonnie Garmus

393. “His wife had recently left him, saying that he didn’t respect her job as a housewife and mother. But being a housewife and mother wasn’t really a job, was it? More like a role. Anyway, she was gone.”

— Bonnie Garmus

394. “In the case of our chicken pot pie, notice how your carrots, peas, onions, and celery are mixed yet remain separate entities. Think about that. A successful chicken pot pie is like a society that functions at a highly efficient level. Call it Sweden.”

— Bonnie Garmus

395. “Then she looked right through the camera lens, and almost as if she divined it, directly into the astonished faces of Mrs. George Fillis’s five children sprawled in front of the TV in Kernville, their eyes open wide, their mouths agape, as if they had just seen their mother for the very first time. “Boys, set the table,” Elizabeth commanded. “Your mother needs a moment to herself.”

— Bonnie Garmus

396. “But isn’t there more solace in science?” Calvin responded. “In things we can prove and therefore work to improve? I just don’t understand how anyone thinks anything written ages ago by drunk people is even remotely believable.”

— Bonnie Garmus

397. “Nor did he faint when she accidentally backed into him at the sink and he caught a whiff of her hair. He didn’t even know hair could smell like that – as if it had been washed in a basin of flowers.”

— Bonnie Garmus

398. “What is wrong with women?” Elizabeth demanded. “Why do they buy into these cultural stereotypes? Worse, why do they perpetuate them? Are they not aware of the dominant female role in the hidden tribes of the Amazon? Is.”

— Bonnie Garmus

399. “Before I go, Elizabeth, can I offer just one bit of advice?” Harriet began. “Actually no, I won’t. I hate getting advice, especially unsolicited advice.” She turned a ruddy color. “Do you hate advice givers? I do. They have a way of making one feel inadequate. And the advice is usually lousy.”

— Bonnie Garmus

400. “And that’s because early readers are only good at something others will eventually be good at, too. So being first isn’t special – it’s just annoying.”

— Bonnie Garmus