Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2025 Update)
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351. “Elizabeth,” Harriet implored. “You have to watch her. I found her crawling into the washing machine yesterday.” “Don’t worry,” Elizabeth said, still staring at the test tubes. “I never start a load without checking first.”

— Bonnie Garmus

352. “Who wants to believe life is exactly how it seems?”

— Bonnie Garmus

353. “Zott, please! We’re women! You know very well Evans left you something!” And Elizabeth, eyes suddenly wide with recognition, was sick all over again.”

— Bonnie Garmus

354. “And such a pretty puppy!” the mother rejoined. “No,” the child said, “it’s not pretty. The puppy’s dead. It got killed!” Which Six-Thirty, after a second, closer look, found disturbingly accurate. “It is not a dead puppy,” the mother said sternly. “It is a very happy puppy, and it is eating a bowl of ice cream.” At which point the frustrated child flung.”

— Bonnie Garmus

355. “Calvin had believed persistence was innate; Elizabeth argued it was learned. Six-Thirty, on the other hand, thought persistence was intelligence.”

— Bonnie Garmus

356. “Or you could try my bowie knife,” Harriet suggested. “Let them know where you stand.”

— Bonnie Garmus

357. “Not at all,” he said. “I can safely say there is not a single normal event in the Bible. Probably one of the reasons it’s so popular. Who wants to believe life is exactly how it seems?”

— Bonnie Garmus

358. “Mrs. Sloane lifted her hands. “Well, Elizabeth, I’m Harriet.” And then there was an awkward silence, as if by sharing their names, they’d each revealed more than they’d planned.”

— Bonnie Garmus

359. “But really it was because of Mr. Sloane. He’d been drinking more and swearing more and the only way she knew how to deal with it was to stay away.”

— Bonnie Garmus

360. “Or perhaps your marriage is more of a covalent bond,” she said, sketching a new structural formula. “And if so, lucky you, because that means you both have strengths that, when combined, create something even better.”

— Bonnie Garmus

361. “Anyway, no one else knew how mad she was; she’d kept it to herself. Well, except during labor, when she might have shouted some regrettable things, her fingernails possibly digging into some unknown person’s forearm as the bigger contractions took hold. She remembered someone besides herself shrieking and swearing. It seemed strange and unprofessional.”

— Bonnie Garmus

362. “There’s no way you go through life without being embarrassed or ashamed about something.”

— Bonnie Garmus

363. “Ever since you brought your little Satan home, I’ve told myself, Go by and check on her.”

— Bonnie Garmus

364. “Do you know how extraordinary that is?” she said. “That a man would treat his lover’s work as seriously as his own?”

— Bonnie Garmus

365. “There will be other men, Miss Zott. Maybe not as famous or as influential as Mr. Evans, but men all the same.”

— Bonnie Garmus

366. “But then you talk and discover he’s a closet Nazi and thinks women complain too much.”

— Bonnie Garmus

367. “When she was in labor and in horrific pain, convinced the baby was snatching her internal organs like suitcases as if to ensure she’d have plenty to wear on the outside, she screamed so violently the bed frame shook.”

— Bonnie Garmus

368. “I can’t believe we’re fired,” he continued. “I mean, we have a hit show on our hands and we’re fired?” Elizabeth looked at him with concern. “No, Walter,” she said slowly. “We’re not fired. We’re in charge.”

— Bonnie Garmus

369. “Politicians don’t make it easy, do they?”

— Bonnie Garmus

370. “The stories were short, memorable, and covered all the bases of love, pride, folly, and forgiveness. Their rules were bite-sized: Don’t be a jerk. Don’t hurt other people or animals. Share what you have with others less fortunate. In other words, be nice.”

— Bonnie Garmus

371. “I’ve always wrapped my shows by telling your children to set the table so that you might have a moment for yourself. ‘A moment for yourself’ – that was the advice Harriet Sloane gave me the first day I met her, and that is the advice that has resulted in my decision to leave Supper at Six. It was Harriet who told me to use that moment to reconnect with my own needs, to identify my true direction, to recommit.”

— Bonnie Garmus

372. “That’s just Calvin. He doesn’t like to run in place in ballet slippers.”

— Bonnie Garmus

373. “Who didn’t want to dip into the deep end of someone else’s childhood and meet all the usual suspects – the strict parent, the competitive siblings, the crazy aunt?”

— Bonnie Garmus

374. “He’d never been one for self-improvement – never even gotten through Dale Carnegie’s book about making friends and influencing people because ten pages in he realized he didn’t care what anyone else thought.”

— Bonnie Garmus

375. “The I-hate-people gene?” Harriet said. “There is one?”

— Bonnie Garmus

376. “You have a lot of nerve,” Donatti said. “You know very well women do not continue to work when pregnant.”

— Bonnie Garmus

377. “Mad, I need you to understand something,” he said, noting, with shock, that his own hands were in the photograph. “Families aren’t meant to fit on trees. Maybe because people aren’t part of the plant kingdom – we’re part of the animal kingdom.”

— Bonnie Garmus

378. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

380. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

383. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

385. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

387. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

389. “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

390. “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

391. “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

392. “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

393. “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

394. “Family is far more than biology.”

— Bonnie Garmus

395. “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

396. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

398. “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

399. “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

400. “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