Top 450 Bonnie Garmus Quotes (2024 Update)
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351. “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

352. “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

353. “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

354. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

359. “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

360. “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

361. “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

362. “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

363. “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

364. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

366. “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

367. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

369. “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

370. “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

371. “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

372. “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

373. “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

374. “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

375. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

377. “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

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. “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

384. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

386. “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

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

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

— Bonnie Garmus

390. “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

391. “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

392. “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

393. “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

394. “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

395. “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

396. “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

397. “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

398. “Elizabeth opened every show by insisting that cooking wasn’t easy and that the next thirty minutes might very well be torturous.”

— Bonnie Garmus

399. “Although he didn’t admit to it, Wakely found himself agreeing. No one had to pray to Snow White or fear the wrath of Rumpelstiltskin to understand the message. 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. He decided to change the topic.”

— Bonnie Garmus

400. “Excuse me, Father,” Calvin said, leafing through his copy, “but there’s a problem with mine. Some of the pages are missing.” “They’re not missing, Calvin,” the priest said. “They’ve been removed.” “Why?” “Because they’re wrong, that’s why. Now open your books to page one hundred nineteen, boys. We’ll start with – ” “Evolution’s missing,” Calvin persisted, riffling through the pages. “That’s enough, Calvin.” “But – ” The ruler cracked down hard against his knuckles.”

— Bonnie Garmus